Staff Solutions Engineer: API & AI Connectivity Architect

Kong Inc.; United States; Remote; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

KongHQ is seeking a Staff Solutions Engineer to be at the center of the API and AI connectivity revolution. You will be a trusted technical advisor helping enterprises architect secure, scalable API ecosystems while navigating the agentic AI era.

You will support field sales, lead technical validation, and own multi-stakeholder deals, while mentoring junior SEs and contributing to thought leadership through blogs and events.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of software engineering and/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, GitHub Copilot, OpenAI Codex, or equivalent is required.
• Working knowledge of AI/LLM architectures, including model routing, rate limiting, semantic caching, and prompt governance.
• Familiarity with Model Context Protocol (MCP) and agentic AI patterns.
• Solid understanding of cloud computing trends and open source business models.
• Strong listener and communicator — you can confidently lead discussions with engineers, architects, and executives.

Responsibilities

• Support field sales in helping customers understand the value of the API and AI connectivity platform.
• Conduct discovery conversations to understand customer requirements and map them to the company 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 Goverance evaluations, including scoping API/AI use cases, LLM traffic management, and governance requirements.
• Deliver demonstrations of the company’s API & AI governance and agentic connectivity capabilities, including MCP governance, semantic caching, prompt guardrails, and shadow AI detection.
• Run API & AI-focused Technical Feasibility Workshops (TFWs) to validate the company’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.

Skills

Enterprise deal leadership

Mentoring SEs

Technical communication

Cloud concepts

Strategic storytelling

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD pipelines

Job description

KongHQ is seeking a Staff Solutions Engineer to be at the center of the API and AI connectivity revolution. You will be a trusted technical advisor helping enterprises architect secure, scalable API ecosystems while navigating the agentic AI era.

You will support field sales, lead technical validation, and own multi-stakeholder deals, while mentoring junior SEs and contributing to thought leadership through blogs and events.