Senior Staff Forward Deployed Engineer

Kong; United States; Remote; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Kong is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to join its Professional Services team. This strategic, customer‑facing role accelerates adoption of Kong’s API and AI Connectivity platform through hands‑on implementation, automation, and migration tooling.

You will work directly with enterprise engineering teams to solve complex challenges and deliver production‑grade solutions in real‑world environments, at scale.

Job description

Are you ready to unlock intelligence?If you don’t think you meet all of the criteria below but are still interested in the job, Nobody checks every box - we’re looking for candidates that are particularly strong in a few areas, and have some interest and capabilities in others.

Join the global leader in API and AI governance in the era of Artificial Intelligence!API traffic now outnumbers human traffic online, and a significant portion of that traffic is powered by the Kong platform, the world’s most popular API gateway. As organizations modernize for AI-driven connectivity, Kong is uniquely positioned at the center of enterprise transformation.

About the Role:

We are seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) to join Kong’s growing Professional Services organization. This is a highly strategic, customer-facing engineering role focused on helping enterprise customers accelerate adoption of Kong’s API and AI Connectivity platform through hands-on implementation, automation, migration tooling, and solution engineering.

As an FDE, you will work directly alongside customer engineering teams to solve complex technical challenges, accelerate migrations, build reusable automation, and deliver production-grade solutions in real-world enterprise environments. You will operate at the intersection of software engineering, architecture, platform engineering, and customer delivery.

This role is ideal for engineers who enjoy building, coding, solving ambiguous problems, and working directly with customers on mission-critical initiatives involving APIs, AI gateways, service connectivity, modernization, and cloud-native platforms.

You will collaborate closely with Solutions Architects, Engagement Managers, Product Engineering, Customer Success, and Product teams to ensure successful customer outcomes while also influencing Kong’s product direction based on field experience.

Working at Kong is a unique opportunity to make a massive impact on Fortune 50/500 customers as they modernize mission-critical systems for the AI era.

What’s in it for you?

Impact

Work directly with some of the world’s largest enterprises to modernize API infrastructure and accelerate AI adoption through Kong’s connectivity platform.

Growth

Accelerate your technical and professional growth through exposure to cutting-edge cloud-native technologies, distributed systems, AI connectivity, automation frameworks, and large-scale enterprise architectures.

Opportunity

Be part of a rapidly growing Professional Services organization that is shaping how enterprises adopt APIs, AI gateways, and modern connectivity platforms globally.

What You’ll Do:

Partner directly with enterprise customers to design, build, and implement Kong-based solutions across cloud, hybrid, and on-premise environments.

Lead hands-on implementation efforts for API gateways, AI gateways, service mesh, developer portals, and related connectivity technologies.

Build automation frameworks, migration tooling, custom integrations, and