Senior Forward-Deployed Engineer for API & AI

Bazeta; United States; Remote; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Kong Inc. is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to work directly with enterprise customers, designing and delivering Kong-based solutions across cloud, hybrid, and on‑prem environments.

You will build automation, migrations, and integrations, driving modernization of API infrastructure for AI connectivity. You will collaborate with product, engineering, and security teams, solving complex problems and delivering production-grade code and tooling.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in customer-facing engineering, platform engineering, or software roles.
• Strong hands-on software engineering and implementation experience.
• Experience with API gateways, API management, or distributed systems platforms.
• Strong Kubernetes and cloud-native infrastructure expertise.
• Experience building automation frameworks, deployment tooling, CI/CD pipelines, or migration tooling.
• Proficiency in languages such as Python, Go, Java, JavaScript, or Lua.
• Experience with IaC and automation tooling such as Terraform, Helm, Ansible, or GitOps frameworks.
• Prior experience in API Management, Open Source, Middleware, SaaS, or Infrastructure software is preferred.

Responsibilities

• Partner directly with 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, custom integrations, and reusable accelerators to simplify customer adoption.
• Drive migration initiatives from legacy API management platforms to Kong.
• Work closely with customer developers, platform teams, architects, security teams, and executives to solve complex technical challenges.
• Develop production-grade code, scripts, plugins, CI/CD integrations, Kubernetes automation, and infrastructure tooling.
• Collaborate with Kong Product and Engineering to influence roadmap priorities from field feedback.
• Create reusable best practices, technical assets, reference architectures, documentation, and design patterns to scale delivery.
• Support strategic customer initiatives involving AI connectivity, governance, platform modernization, and cloud-native transformation.

Skills

Kubernetes

Cloud-native infra

API gateways

API management

Python

Go

Java

JavaScript

Lua

Terraform

Helm

Ansible

GitOps

Distributed systems

Tools

Terraform

Helm

Ansible

CI/CD

Job description

Kong Inc. is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to work directly with enterprise customers, designing and delivering Kong-based solutions across cloud, hybrid, and on‑prem environments.

You will build automation, migrations, and integrations, driving modernization of API infrastructure for AI connectivity. You will collaborate with product, engineering, and security teams, solving complex problems and delivering production-grade code and tooling.