Forward Deployed Engineer AI Gateway EMEA

Kong; England (AR); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Kong is seeking a Forward-Deployed Engineer to drive production-grade AI workloads for customers. You will work with platform, security and engineering teams across EMEA to ensure secure, scalable AI gateway implementations and agentic patterns that endure beyond pilots.

You will own the path from discovery to production, design architectures, build prototypes, and collaborate with internal engineering to accelerate future deals. Strong English and travel across EMEA are required.

Qualifications

• Hands-on engineering with production software in Go, Python or TypeScript.
• Experience in a customer-facing technical role (forward-deployed, solutions architecture, staff/principal engineering).
• Enterprise architecture instincts: design for identity, network, security and observability.
• Working knowledge of LLMs and agentic patterns: model APIs, tool calling, MCP, cost and latency trade-offs.
• Experience with API gateways or infrastructure: Kubernetes, service mesh, OAuth/OIDC, mTLS, policy enforcement.
• Able to converse with staff engineers and security architects, from whiteboard to working code.
• Owns outcomes, comfortable with ambiguity and driving work to done.
• Strong written and spoken English; additional European languages are a plus.
• Willingness to travel to customer sites across EMEA.

Responsibilities

• Lead AI, API and agentic technical discovery with customer platform, security and engineering teams.
• Design runtime architecture across models, APIs, MCP and tool access, identity and policy.
• Build prototypes, integrations, evaluation flows and reference implementations that prove Kong governs real production traffic.
• Remove blockers in pilot and production: auth, network, observability, latency and cost.
• Own the technical path from pilot to paid, and stay on it until the workload is running.
• Turn what you build into reusable patterns, so the next AI Gateway deal is faster and cheaper to win.
• Spend regular time embedded with Kong's internal engineering team, pairing on AI Gateway and agentic roadmap work.
• Feed field patterns and roadmap-critical requirements straight back to Product, before competitors define the narrative.
• Partner with Sales, Solutions Engineering and Customer Success across EMEA on strategic AI opportunities.

Skills

Go

Python

TypeScript

Solutions architecture

Enterprise architecture

LLM patterns

English proficiency

Tools

Kubernetes

OAuth/OIDC

mTLS

Policy enforcement

Job description

Are you ready to unlock intelligence?

About the role

You'll make our customers' first strategic AI use case work securely, in production, in their real environment. Not a demo. Not a proof-of-concept that quietly dies. Real traffic, real identity, real policy.

As a Forward-Deployed Engineer in EMEA, you'll sit with platform, security and engineering teams at some of the region's most important enterprises, and own the technical path from first discovery call to a workload that's actually running. You're a builder with enterprise architecture instincts, credible with staff engineers and security architects, and comfortable owning ambiguity across APIs, AI Gateway, agents, MCP, identity and policy.

This is not a demo-only SE role, and it's not a ticket-based implementation consultancy. You own technical success for strategic AI opportunities end to end, then take what you learn back into Kong's own engineering team to make the next deal faster.

What you'll do

• Lead AI, API and agentic technical discovery with customer platform, security and engineering teams.

• Design runtime architecture across models, APIs, MCP and tool access, identity and policy.

• Build prototypes, integrations, evaluation flows and reference implementations that prove Kong governs real production traffic.

• Remove blockers in pilot and production: auth, network, observability, latency and cost.

• Own the technical path from pilot to paid, and stay on it until the workload is running.

• Turn what you build into reusable patterns, so the next AI Gateway deal is faster and cheaper to win.

• Spend regular time embedded with Kong's internal engineering team, pairing on AI Gateway and agentic roadmap work.

• Feed field patterns and roadmap-critical requirements straight back to Product, before competitors define the narrative.

• Partner with Sales, Solutions Engineering and Customer Success across EMEA on strategic AI opportunities.

What you'll bring

• Strong hands-on engineering background, with experience building and shipping production software (Go, Python, TypeScript or similar).

• Experience in a customer-facing technical role such as forward-deployed, solutions architecture, staff or principal engineering, or technical consulting.

• Enterprise architecture instincts: you can design for identity, network, security and observability constraints in complex environments.

• Working knowledge of LLM and agentic patterns: model APIs, tool calling, MCP, evaluation and cost and latency trade-offs.

• Experience with API gateways or infrastructure: Kubernetes, service mesh, OAuth/OIDC, mTLS, policy enforcement.

• Credibility with staff engineers and security architects. You can lead a technical discussion from whiteboard to working code.

• You own outcomes, not tickets. You're comfortable with ambiguity and drive work to done.

• Strong written and verbal communication in English; additional European languages are a plus.

• Willingness to travel to customer sites across EMEA as needed.

Bonus points

• Prior experience at an AI-native, developer-platform or infrastructure company.

• Experience with Kong Gateway, Konnect or other API management platforms.

• Open source contributions, or a track record of publishing reference architectures or patterns.

About Kong:

Kong Inc., the AI Connectivity Company, is building the connectivity layer of AI. Trusted by the Fortune 500 and AI-native startups alike, Kong's unified API and AI platform enables organizations to secure, manage, accelerate, govern, and monetize the flow of intelligence across APIs and AI traffic on any model, any cloud. For more information, visit www.konghq.com.