Software Engineer, Core Platform

Kong; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 110,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Kong is seeking a Software Engineer to join the IAM Team, building scalable backend services for Kong Konnect and the Developer Portal. You will develop Golang microservices handling identity management, access control, and permissions enforcement for a multi-tenant platform.

You'll learn IAM technologies while contributing to production systems at scale on AWS and Kubernetes, collaborating with security teams and product managers to deliver secure, high-availability software.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of professional software engineering experience building backend services and distributed systems.
• Strong proficiency in Golang with experience building production microservices.
• Strong experience with API development and design (REST, gRPC) and building API-first services.
• Experience building and deploying microservices architectures in production environments.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain backend microservices in Golang that power authentication and authorization for Kong Konnect and Developer Portal.
• Build scalable APIs that integrate identity and access management capabilities across Kong's product ecosystem.
• Deploy and manage services on AWS using Kubernetes for container orchestration and high availability.
• Implement secure, performant backend services that handle high-volume traffic and enforce access control policies.
• Collaborate with senior engineers and security teams to learn and implement IAM best practices.
• Work with product managers and other engineering teams to deliver features that enhance developer and enterprise user experiences.
• Write clean, maintainable, well-tested code with comprehensive unit, integration, and end-to-end tests.
• Participate in code reviews, design discussions, and architecture planning.
• Monitor and optimize service performance, reliability, and security through observability tools and continuous improvement.
• Participate in on-call rotation to ensure high availability of platform services.
• Contribute to building a culture of engineering excellence and security-first development.

Skills

Golang

Backend services

Distributed systems

REST API design

gRPC

AWS

Kubernetes

Security best practices

CI/CD

GitHub Actions

Problem solving

Collaboration

Tools

GitHub Actions

Jenkins

Kubernetes

AWS

Terraform

Datadog

Job description

Are you ready to unlock intelligence? 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.

Come Power the World's Connections?

About The IAM 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 IAM Team is responsible for building and maintaining the identity and access management systems that secure Kong Konnect and the Developer Portal. We develop the authentication and authorization services that protect millions of API requests daily, enabling secure access control for enterprise customers and developers worldwide. Our systems power fine-grained permissions, role-based access control, and seamless identity experiences across Kong's platform.

About The Role

The Software Engineer will be a key contributor to the IAM Team, building scalable backend services for Kong Konnect and the Developer Portal. You'll develop microservices in Golang that handle identity management, access control, and permissions enforcement for Kong's multi-tenant platform. This role requires strong platform engineering fundamentals, Golang proficiency, microservices architecture experience, and cloud-native development on AWS and Kubernetes. You'll learn and grow your expertise in IAM technologies while building production systems at scale.

What You'll Do

• Develop and maintain backend microservices in Golang that power authentication and authorization for Kong Konnect and Developer Portal.
• Build scalable APIs that integrate identity and access management capabilities across Kong's product ecosystem.
• Deploy and manage services on AWS using Kubernetes for container orchestration and high availability.
• Implement secure, performant backend services that handle high-volume traffic and enforce access control policies.
• Collaborate with senior engineers and security teams to learn and implement IAM best practices.
• Work with product managers and other engineering teams to deliver features that enhance developer and enterprise user experiences.
• Write clean, maintainable, well-tested code with comprehensive unit, integration, and end-to-end tests.
• Participate in code reviews, design discussions, and architecture planning.
• Monitor and optimize service performance, reliability, and security through observability tools and continuous improvement.
• Participate in on-call rotation to ensure high availability of platform services.
• Contribute to building a culture of engineering excellence and security-first development.

What You'll Bring

• 3+ years of professional software engineering experience building backend services and distributed systems.
• Strong proficiency in Golang with experience building production microservices.
• Strong experience with API development and design (REST, gRPC) and building API-first services.
• Experience building and deploying microservices architectures in production environments.
• Hands-on experience with AWS services (EKS, ECS, Lambda, DynamoDB, RDS, S3, etc.).
• Experience with Kubernetes including deployment, scaling, and managing containerized applications.
• Understanding of distributed systems concepts and building highly available, fault-tolerant services.
• Knowledge of security best practices for backend services including secure credential storage and secret management.
• Experience with multi-tenancy and building services that serve multiple customers.
• Experience with Continuous Integration/Delivery pipelines and tools such as GitHub Actions or Jenkins.
• Experience with database systems (SQL and NoSQL) and data modeling.
• Solid computer science fundamentals including data structures, algorithms, and system design.
• Demonstrated skills using code repositories and collaboration tools (GitHub, JIRA, Confluence, or similar).
• Experience working with globally distributed teams.
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to debug complex distributed systems issues.
• Eagerness to learn about identity and access management technologies.

Bonus Points

• Experience with authentication and authorization technologies including OAuth 2.0, OIDC, JWT, SAML, or other IAM standards.
• Knowledge of role-based access control (RBAC) and permissions systems.
• Experience with API Gateway technologies or building developer portals.
• Understanding of identity federation and Single Sign-On (SSO) implementations.
• Experience with identity providers (Auth0, Okta, Keycloak, or similar).
• Familiarity with token lifecycle management and session management.
• Experience with message queues and event streaming (Kafka, RabbitMQ, NATS).
• Knowledge of zero-trust security architectures and policy-based access control.
• Experience with session management and distributed caching (Redis, Memcached).
• Experience with observability and monitoring tools (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, CloudWatch).
• Knowledge of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools such as Terraform or Pulumi.
• Experience with service mesh technologies (Istio, Linkerd) and mTLS.
• Familiarity with compliance frameworks (SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR).
• Contributions to open-source projects or active involvement in engineering communities.
• Experience with additional programming languages such as Python, Java, or Rust.
• Background in security practices or interest in security engineering.

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.

Compensation Range: $110K - $200K