Staff Solutions Engineer: API & AI Connectivity Architect

Kong; United States; Remote; USD 160,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Kong is seeking a Staff Solutions Engineer in the United States to act as a trusted technical advisor at the intersection of API management and AI connectivity. You will support field sales, run discovery, validate POCs, and drive technical strategy for complex enterprise deals with multiple stakeholders.

You will mentor junior SEs, create technical docs, and lead API/AI governance workshops. Expect collaboration with product and engineering teams, customer-facing demonstrations, and industry

Qualifications

• 7+ years of software engineering or solutions engineering experience at a SaaS, open source, or enterprise software company.
• Proven track record owning complex, enterprise-level deals with multiple technical and executive stakeholders.
• Experience mentoring or coaching other SEs or technical team members.
• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud-native platforms.
• Experience with REST and GraphQL APIs, CI/CD pipelines, and API security patterns (OAuth2, OIDC, mTLS).
• Hands-on experience with AI-assisted development tooling — Claude Code.

Responsibilities

• Support field sales in helping customers understand the value of the Kong API and AI connectivity platform.
• Conduct discovery conversations to understand customer requirements and map them to Kong solutions, from initial product reviews through to production.
• Support POCs throughout the entire evaluation process, owning technical validation and stakeholder alignment.
• Ensure customer satisfaction across your assigned set of accounts.
• Collaborate with support, product, and engineering teams to advocate for customer needs.
• Create technical documentation for DevOps, implementations, and services engagements.
• Lead and support API Management and AI Governance evaluations, including scoping API/AI use cases, LLM traffic management, and governance requirements.
• Deliver demonstrations of Kong’s API AI governance and agentic connectivity capabilities, including Model Context Protocol (MCP) governance, semantic caching, prompt guardrails, and shadow AI detection.
• Run API AI-focused Technical Feasibility Workshops (TFWs) to validate Kong’s fit for modern and/or AI/agentic architectures.
• Own the technical strategy for complex, multi-stakeholder enterprise deals from qualification through close.
• Mentor and coach junior SEs on technical skills, discovery methods, and deal strategy.
• Drive thought leadership by authoring technical blogs, hosting webinars, speaking at industry events and conferences such as AWS re:Invent, Google Next, API AI summit, and regional events.
• Influence product direction by synthesizing customer feedback and market signals into actionable input for the product team.
• And any additional tasks required by manager.

Skills

Enterprise deals ownership

Mentoring SEs

Stakeholder management

Technical storytelling

AI tooling Claude Code

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

REST APIs

GraphQL APIs

CI/CD

OAuth2/OIDC/mTLS

Job description

Kong is seeking a Staff Solutions Engineer in the United States to act as a trusted technical advisor at the intersection of API management and AI connectivity. You will support field sales, run discovery, validate POCs, and drive technical strategy for complex enterprise deals with multiple stakeholders.

You will mentor junior SEs, create technical docs, and lead API/AI governance workshops. Expect collaboration with product and engineering teams, customer-facing demonstrations, and industry