Platform Engineer, Specialist

Vanguard; Malvern (Chester County); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

In-person learning opportunities

Job summary

Vanguard in Malvern, PA is seeking an experienced Kong External API Gateway engineer to support security fixes, patching, and platform optimization. You will help ensure secure, scalable API communications with external vendors and partners in a complex enterprise boundary.

The role requires deep Kong experience in gateway configurations, containers, testing, and performance validation. You will collaborate in an Agile, run-it-yourself environment with emphasis on reliability, incident response,

Qualifications

• Deep experience with Kong Gateway and related configurations.
• Proficiency in containerized environments and CI/CD.
• Strong testing practices including performance validation.

Responsibilities

• Evaluate changes for impact and risk, implement safely, and validate thoroughly.
• Build, test, deploy, and support Kong Gateway configurations, plugins, integrations, and new capabilities.
• Troubleshoot production issues and trace requests across the full stack from gateway to upstream services.
• Conduct performance, load, resiliency, and API testing.
• Apply security patches, implement security controls, and support incident response.
• Maintain documentation, configuration governance, CI/CD pipelines, and deployment standards.

Skills

Kong Gateway

API security

CI/CD

Testing & validation

Troubleshooting

Docker

AWS ECS

OpenTelemetry

Tools

Kong Konnect

OpenTelemetry

Splunk

CloudFormation

Terraform

Job description

Seeking an experienced Kong External API Gateway (KEG) engineer to support Mythos-related security fixes, patching, and platform optimization. KEG serves as Vanguard's enterprise boundary enabling APIs to communicate with external vendors and partners. This role requires deep expertise in API Gateways, containerized environments, and comprehensive testing practices including performance validation. (Previous Kong experience very helpful)

Team Fit

• Growth mindset with an "if I don't know it, I can learn it" attitude.
• Experience working in Agile and "you build it, you run it" environments.
• Strong client communication and collaboration skills.
• Self-directed, thorough in testing and validation, and comfortable balancing production support with new development work.
• Empathy for both API producers and consumers.

Core Responsibilities

• Evaluate changes for impact and risk, implement safely, and validate thoroughly.
• Build, test, deploy, and support Kong Gateway configurations, plugins, integrations, and new capabilities.
• Troubleshoot production issues and trace requests across the full stack from gateway to upstream services.
• Conduct performance, load, resiliency, and API testing.
• Apply security patches, implement security controls, and support incident response.
• Maintain documentation, configuration governance, CI/CD pipelines, and deployment standards.

Technical Expertise

API Gateway & Kong

• Deep experience with Kong Gateway/Konnect, including services, routes, consumers, plugins, declarative configuration (decK), DB-less mode, Admin API, Control Plane/Data Plane architecture, and custom plugin development.
• Strong understanding of API gateway patterns, request/response lifecycles, traffic management, service abstraction, ingress/egress routing, and upstream/downstream services.
• Knowledge of Kong plugin execution, lifecycle management, standardization, and configuration governance.

Core Technology Stack

• Experience across networking, security, gateway, and delivery layers, including DNS, TLS, load balancing, authentication, authorization, rate limiting, routing, CI/CD, and configuration management.
• Strong experience with Docker, AWS ECS, containerized environments, infrastructure provisioning, horizontal scaling, secrets management, and platform operations.
• Familiarity with CloudFormation, infrastructure-as-code, high availability, resiliency patterns, failover strategies, and multi-region deployments.

Development & APIs

• Proficiency in Java, Python, Node.js, TypeScript, or similar languages; Lua preferred.
• Strong understanding of REST APIs, OpenAPI/Swagger, API versioning, contract testing, microservices architecture, and YAML-based configuration.
• Experience developing and supporting API integrations for internal and external consumers.

Testing & Quality

• Experience with performance, load, contract, resiliency, and automated testing.
• Strong knowledge of TDD/BDD methodologies, API testing practices, and validation frameworks.
• Experience with chaos engineering and large-scale configuration testing preferred.

Observability & Operations

• Expertise tracing requests across distributed systems and distinguishing gateway versus backend issues.
• Experience using Splunk, Honeycomb, OpenTelemetry, logging, telemetry, metrics analysis, alerting, incident response, and performance troubleshooting.

Security

• Proven experience applying security patches and managing production security controls.
• Strong understanding of OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, JWT, mTLS, threat protection, authorization models, rate limiting, vulnerability remediation, and DevSecOps practices.
• Ability to quickly learn enterprise security platforms and authentication frameworks.

Additional Preferred Experience

• API lifecycle management, governance, onboarding, policy enforcement, and standardized gateway patterns.
• External partner integrations, vendor connectivity, hybrid-cloud routing, and enterprise boundary security.
• Developer enablement, onboarding support, documentation, templates, and best-practice implementation.

Special Factors

Sponsorship

• Vanguard is not offering visa sponsorship for this position.

About Vanguard

At Vanguard, we don't just have a mission—we're on a mission. To work for the long-term financial wellbeing of our clients. To lead through product and services that transform our clients' lives. To learn and develop our skills as individuals and as a team. From Malvern to Melbourne, our mission drives us forward and inspires us to be our best.

How We Work

Vanguard has implemented a hybrid working model for the majority of our crew members, designed to capture the benefits of enhanced flexibility while enabling in-person learning, collaboration, and connection. We believe our mission-driven and highly collaborative culture is a critical enabler to support long-term client outcomes and enrich the employee experience.