Forward Deployed Engineer - API & AI Connectivity

Cacheflow; Town of Texas (WI); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Kong Inc. in the United States seeks a Forward Deployed Engineer to join its Professional Services team, delivering hands-on implementation, automation, and solution engineering for enterprise customers across cloud, hybrid, and on-prem environments.

You will work directly with customer developers, architects, and executives to design and implement Kong-based solutions, build reusable accelerators, and influence product direction based on field experience, enabling modern, AI-enabled

Qualifications

• 8+ years in customer-facing engineering or related roles.
• Strong hands-on software engineering and implementation experience.
• Experience with API gateways, API management, or distributed systems.
• Strong Kubernetes and cloud-native infrastructure expertise.
• Experience building automation frameworks, deployment tooling, CI/CD pipelines, or migration tooling.
• Proficient in Linux, networking, cloud infrastructure, and DevOps practices.
• Experience with major cloud providers including AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Programming in Python, Go, Java, JavaScript, or Lua.
• Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code and automation tooling such as Terraform, Helm, Ansible, or GitOps.
• Prior experience in API Management, Open Source, Middleware, SaaS, or Infrastructure software companies preferred.

Responsibilities

• Partner enterprise customers to design, build, and implement Kong-based solutions across cloud, hybrid, and on-premise environments.
• Lead hands-on implementation for API gateways, AI gateways, service mesh, developer portals, and related connectivity technologies.
• Build automation frameworks, migration tooling, and reusable accelerators to simplify adoption and modernization.
• Drive migration initiatives from legacy API management platforms to Kong.
• Collaborate with customer developers, platform teams, architects, security teams, and executives to solve complex challenges.
• Develop production-grade code, scripts, plugins, CI/CD integrations, Kubernetes automation, and infra tooling.
• Collaborate with Kong Product and Engineering to influence roadmap based on field feedback.
• Create reusable best practices, reference architectures, and design patterns to scale delivery.
• Support strategic customer initiatives involving AI connectivity, governance, and cloud-native transformation.

Skills

Customer-facing engineering

Kubernetes

Cloud infrastructure

CI/CD tooling

Linux/Networking

Programming (Python/Go/Java/JS/Lua)

Terraform/Helm/Ansible

Open source/API management

Tools

Terraform

Helm

Ansible

GitOps

Job description

Kong Inc. in the United States seeks a Forward Deployed Engineer to join its Professional Services team, delivering hands-on implementation, automation, and solution engineering for enterprise customers across cloud, hybrid, and on-prem environments.

You will work directly with customer developers, architects, and executives to design and implement Kong-based solutions, build reusable accelerators, and influence product direction based on field experience, enabling modern, AI-enabled