KONG DEVELOPER

VSG Business Solutions LLC; Malvern (Chester County); On-site; USD 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

VSG Business Solutions LLC in Malvern, PA seeks an experienced Kong API Gateway Engineer to support security patching, troubleshooting, and performance testing for an enterprise API gateway environment.

You will manage Kong Gateway/Kong Konnect deployments, implement patches, troubleshoot production incidents, and develop tests, Kong plugins, and CI/CD configurations, with observability tools like Splunk/OpenTelemetry. This role requires strong DNS/TLS, mTLS, and API security expertise.

Qualifications

• Must have hands-on Kong Gateway / Kong Konnect experience.
• Strong AWS ECS and Docker experience.
• API Gateway, REST APIs, microservices, and API security expertise.
• Solid troubleshooting and production-support background.
• CI/CD, configuration management, and automated testing.
• Experience with performance / load testing.
• Splunk experience for observability.
• Knowledge of OAuth2.0, OIDC, JWT, mTLS, and rate limiting.

Responsibilities

• Manage and support Kong Gateway environments.
• Implement security patches and configuration changes.
• Troubleshoot production incidents across Kong upstream services.
• Develop and execute functional, integration, load, and performance tests.
• Develop and customize Kong plugins and configurations using Lua when needed.

Skills

Kong Gateway / Kong Konnect

AWS ECS / Docker

API security

Troubleshooting / production support

CI/CD / automation / testing

Performance / load testing

Splunk / Observability

OAuth 2.0 / OIDC / JWT / mTLS / rate-l

DNS / TLS / routing / load balancing

Cloud / IaC concepts

Tools

Docker

Kong Konnect tooling

decK

YAML

OpenTelemetry

Terraform / CloudFormation

Job description

Overview

Seeking an experienced Kong API Gateway Engineer to support security patching, troubleshooting, performance testing, platform optimization, and new development for an enterprise API gateway environment.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage and support Kong Gateway / Kong Konnect environments.
• Implement security patches, configuration changes, and platform enhancements.
• Troubleshoot issues across Kong upstream services, including production incidents.
• Develop and execute functional, integration, load, and performance tests.
• Develop/customize Kong plugins and configurations, including Lua when needed.
• Manage gateway configurations using decK, DB-less Kong, YAML, and CI/CD.
• Support containerized Kong deployments using Docker and AWS ECS.
• Implement and troubleshoot routing, TLS, DNS, authentication, authorization, rate limiting, and mTLS.
• Use Splunk, Honeycomb, OpenTelemetry, and other observability tools for debugging and tracing.
• Maintain documentation and standardized gateway patterns.

Must-Have Skills

• Strong hands-on Kong Gateway / Kong Konnect experience.
• AWS ECS and Docker experience.
• API Gateway, REST APIs, microservices, and API security expertise.
• Strong troubleshooting/debugging and production support experience.
• CI/CD, configuration management, and automated testing.
• Experience with performance/load testing.
• Splunk experience.
• Knowledge of OAuth 2.0, OIDC, JWT, mTLS, rate limiting, and security controls.
• Strong networking fundamentals: DNS, TLS, routing, load balancing.

Nice to Have

• Lua / custom Kong plugin development
• OpenResty/Nginx
• PACT/API contract testing
• Chaos/resiliency testing
• CloudFormation/IaC
• Honeycomb/OpenTelemetry
• Previous experience working in enterprise external API gateway environments