Senior Enterprise API & AI Connectivity Engineer

Kong; Trenton (NJ); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Kong is seeking an experienced Forward Deployed Engineer to join its Professional Services team in the United States. You will work directly with Fortune 500 customers to design, build, and implement Kong-based solutions across cloud, hybrid, and on-prem environments.

You will lead hands-on efforts for API gateways, AI gateways, service mesh, and related connectivity technologies. You will develop automation frameworks, migration tooling, and reusable accelerators while driving migrations from

Qualifications

• 8+ years in customer-facing engineering, platform engineering, professional services, SRE, or software engineering roles.
• Hands-on software engineering and implementation experience.
• Experience with API gateways, API management, integrations, or distributed systems platforms.
• Strong Kubernetes and cloud-native infrastructure expertise.
• Experience building automation frameworks, deployment tooling, CI/CD pipelines, or migration tooling.
• Strong proficiency 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 (Terraform, Helm, Ansible, GitOps).
• Prior experience in API Management, Open Source, Middleware, SaaS, or Infrastructure software is highly preferred.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and implement Kong-based solutions across cloud, hybrid, and on-prem environments.
• Lead hands-on implementation for API gateways, AI gateways, service mesh, and developer portals.
• Build automation frameworks, migration tooling, custom integrations, and reusable accelerators.
• Drive migrations 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 infrastructure tooling.
• Collaborate with Kong Product and Engineering to influence roadmap based on field feedback.
• Create reusable best practices, reference architectures, documentation, and design patterns to scale delivery.

Skills

Kubernetes

Cloud platforms

CI/CD

Terraform

Python

Go

Java

JavaScript

Linux

GitOps

Tools

Terraform

Helm

Ansible

GitOps

Job description

Kong is seeking an experienced Forward Deployed Engineer to join its Professional Services team in the United States. You will work directly with Fortune 500 customers to design, build, and implement Kong-based solutions across cloud, hybrid, and on-prem environments.

You will lead hands-on efforts for API gateways, AI gateways, service mesh, and related connectivity technologies. You will develop automation frameworks, migration tooling, and reusable accelerators while driving migrations from