Staff Solutions Engineer - West

Kong; California City (CA); Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Kong is seeking a Staff Solutions Engineer to act as a trusted technical advisor, helping enterprises architect secure, scalable API ecosystems while navigating the agentic AI era.

You will support field sales, run discovery conversations, and collaborate with product and engineering teams to drive customer success. This role requires 7+ years in software or solutions engineering, with strong cloud-native, API, and AI tooling experience.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of software engineering and/or solutions engineering experience in SaaS, open source, or enterprise software.
• Experience mentoring or coaching other SEs or technical teams.
• Hands-on 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 such as Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, OpenAI Codex, or equivalents.

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 review to production.
• 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, MCP governance, and related requirements.
• Deliver demonstrations of Kong’s API & AI governance and agentic connectivity capabilities.
• Run API & AI-focused Technical Feasibility Workshops (TFWs).
• Drive thought leadership by authoring technical blogs, hosting webinars, and speaking at industry events and conferences.
• Influence product direction by synthesizing customer feedback and market signals into actionable input for the product team.

Skills

APIs

Cloud-native platforms

Docker

Kubernetes

REST & GraphQL

CI/CD

OAuth2/OIDC

AI tooling

Communication

Mentoring

Tools

AWS

GCP

Azure

Job description

Are you ready to unlock intelligence? Are you ready to sit at the epicenter of the API and AI connectivity revolution? As a Staff Solutions Engineer at Kong, you won't just be selling a platform — you’ll be a trusted technical advisor helping the world’s most innovative enterprises architect secure, scalable API ecosystems while navigating the transition into the agentic AI era. Kong sits at the intersection of API management and AI connectivity, and you’ll be the person who makes that story real for customers.

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 7+ years of software engineering and/or solutions engineering experience at a SaaS, open source, or enterprise software company.
• 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.
• Enthusiasm for working in a high-profile, fast-paced environment at the intersection of API and AI connectivity.

the AI Connectivity Company, is building the connectivity layer of AI. Trusted by the Fortune 500 and AI-native startups alike, Kong's unified API and AI platform enables organizations to secure, manage, accelerate, govern, and monetize the flow of intelligence across APIs and AI traffic - on any model, any cloud.