Senior Forward Deployed Engineer — AI & API Modernization

Kong; Bismarck (ND); On-site; USD 192,000 - 274,000; Full time

Job summary

Kong Inc., the AI Connectivity Company, is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to join our Professional Services team. You will work directly with enterprise customers to design, build, and implement Kong-based solutions across cloud, hybrid, and on-prem environments.

The role emphasizes hands-on engineering, migration tooling, and automation, with collaboration across Solutions Architects, Product, and Customer Success to deliver production-grade results and measurable business outcomes.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in customer-facing engineering or professional services.
• Strong hands-on software engineering experience.
• Experience with API gateways, API management, integrations.
• Kubernetes and cloud-native infrastructure expertise.
• Proficiency with Linux, networking, and DevOps practices.

Responsibilities

• 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, and developer portals.
• Build automation frameworks, migration tooling, and reusable accelerators.
• Drive migrations from legacy API management platforms to Kong.
• Develop production-grade code, scripts, CI/CD integrations, Kubernetes automation.
• Collaborate with Product and Engineering to influence roadmap.

Skills

Kubernetes

Cloud native

CI/CD pipelines

Automation tooling

Linux

Networking

Python

Go

Java

JavaScript

Lua

Terraform

Helm

Ansible

GitOps

Tools

Terraform

Helm

Ansible

GitOps

Job description

Kong Inc., the AI Connectivity Company, is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to join our Professional Services team. You will work directly with enterprise customers to design, build, and implement Kong-based solutions across cloud, hybrid, and on-prem environments.

The role emphasizes hands-on engineering, migration tooling, and automation, with collaboration across Solutions Architects, Product, and Customer Success to deliver production-grade results and measurable business outcomes.