Senior Software Engineer, Konnect Core Platform

Kong; United States; On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Kong Inc. is seeking a Senior Software Engineer for the Platform Team to build and maintain search infrastructure, notification systems, and audit logging services at scale.

You will design scalable backend services in Golang and develop MCP tools to extend platform capabilities. Ideal candidates have deep distributed systems knowledge, experience with search tech (Elasticsearch/OpenSearch/Solr), and strong cloud-native engineering chops, collaborating with cross-functional teams to deliver

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience building backend services and distributed systems.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain search infrastructure and query systems powering product discovery and analytics.
• Build and optimize real-time notification services across the platform.
• Develop and enhance audit logging systems for security and compliance data.
• Create MCP tools and integrations to extend platform functionality.
• Architect scalable backend services using Golang and cloud-native tech.
• Collaborate with product managers, designers, and engineers to deliver high-quality features.
• Write clean, tested code with unit, integration, and end-to-end tests.
• Participate in code reviews, design discussions, and planning.
• Optimize performance, reliability, and scalability via profiling and monitoring.
• Contribute to the platform team's technical roadmap and best practices.
• Mentor junior engineers and foster engineering excellence.
• Participate in on-call rotation for high availability.

Skills

Golang proficiency

Distributed systems

Backend design

Cloud-native technologies

REST & gRPC

CI/CD

Open-source collaboration

Tools

Elasticsearch/OpenSearch/Solr

Kafka/RabbitMQ/NATS

Docker

Kubernetes

GitHub Actions

Terraform/Pulumi

AWS/GCP/Azure

Job description

Are you ready to unlock intelligence?

Come Power the World's Connections

About the Platform Team at Kong:

Kong Inc., a leading developer of cloud API technologies, is on a mission to enable companies around the world to become "API-first" and securely accelerate AI adoption. Kong helps organizations globally - from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises - unleash developer productivity, build securely, and accelerate time to market.

The Platform Team is the backbone of Kong's infrastructure, building and maintaining the critical services that power the entire Kong ecosystem. Our team owns authentication, authorization, search, notifications, audit logging, and other foundational services that ensure Kong's products are secure, scalable, and reliable. These services process millions of requests daily and are trusted by some of the world's most innovative companies.

About the role:

The Senior Software Engineer will be a key contributor to the Platform Team, focusing on building and maintaining our search infrastructure, notification systems, and audit logging services. You'll design and implement scalable, high-performance backend services that handle millions of events and queries daily. Additionally, you'll work on developing Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools that extend and enhance Kong's platform capabilities. This role requires deep expertise in distributed systems, Golang, and building resilient backend services that operate at scale.

What you'll do:

• Design, develop, and maintain search infrastructure and query systems that power Kong's product discovery and analytics capabilities.

• Build and optimize notification services that deliver real-time alerts and updates across Kong's platform.

• Develop and enhance audit logging systems that capture, store, and query critical security and compliance data.

• Create MCP (Model Context Protocol) tools and integrations that extend platform functionality and enable new workflows.

• Architect and implement scalable, distributed backend services using Golang and modern cloud-native technologies.

• Collaborate with product managers, designers, and other engineers to define requirements and deliver high-quality features.

• Write clean, maintainable, well-tested code with comprehensive unit, integration, and end-to-end tests.

• Participate in code reviews, design discussions, and technical planning sessions.

• Optimize service performance, reliability, and scalability through profiling, monitoring, and iterative improvements.

• Contribute to the platform team's technical roadmap and help define architecture and best practices.

• Mentor junior engineers and contribute to a culture of engineering excellence.

• Participate in on-call rotation to ensure high availability of platform services.

What you'll bring:

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience building backend services and distributed systems.

• Strong proficiency in Golang with experience building production services at scale.

• Deep understanding of distributed systems concepts including consistency, availability, partitioning, and consensus.

• Experience designing and implementing search infrastructure using technologies like Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, Solr, or similar.

• Experience building event-driven architectures and notification systems.

• Strong knowledge of database systems (SQL and NoSQL) and data modeling.

• Experience with API design and development (REST, gRPC).

• Solid understanding of microservices architecture and container orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes).

• Experience with message queues and event streaming platforms (Kafka, RabbitMQ, NATS, or similar).

• Strong computer science fundamentals including data structures, algorithms, and system design.

• Experience with Continuous Integration/Delivery concepts and tools, such as GitHub Actions or Jenkins.

• Demonstrated skills using code repositories and collaboration tools (GitHub, JIRA, Confluence, or similar).

• Experience working with globally distributed teams.

• Excellent problem-solving skills and ability to debug complex distributed systems issues.

Bonus Points:

• Experience with Model Context Protocol (MCP) or similar extensibility frameworks.

• Experience building compliance and audit logging systems for enterprise or regulated environments.

• Knowledge of observability and monitoring practices (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, ELK stack).

• Experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools such as Terraform or Pulumi.

• Experience with Cloud Platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure.

• Familiarity with authentication and authorization systems (OAuth 2.0, OIDC, JWT).

• Experience with high-throughput, low-latency systems and performance optimization.

• Experience with rate limiting, throttling, and quota management systems.

• Knowledge of security best practices for backend services.

• Experience with service mesh technologies (Istio, Linkerd).

• Contributions to open-source projects or active involvement in the developer community.

• Experience with additional programming languages such as Python, Java, or Rust.

• Background in SRE practices and building reliable, self-healing systems.

About Kong:

Kong Inc., a leading developer of API and AI connectivity technologies, is building the infrastructure that powers the agentic era. Trusted by the Fortune 500 and startups alike, Kong's unified API and AI platform, Kong Konnect, enables organizations to secure, manage, accelerate, govern, and monetize the flow of intelligence across APIs and AI models. For more information, visit www.konghq.com.