Staff Technical Support Engineer

Kong; United States; On-site; USD 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Kong is seeking a Staff Technical Support Engineer to lead investigations and resolutions of complex customer issues in production environments. You will own cases, work with customers, Product, and Engineering, and contribute to knowledge bases. Core duties include troubleshooting with logs and metrics, mentoring peers, and driving improvements across enterprise support.

Weekend on-call duties apply. The role emphasizes collaboration across global teams, deep technical investigations, and clear

Qualifications

• Strong understanding of REST and RESTful APIs.
• Coding skills, with the ability to read, understand, and troubleshoot code.
• Highly experienced with containers, cluster deployment, and management tools such as Docker and Kubernetes.
• 5+ years of experience in a customer-facing technical role.
• Basic proficiency in AI concepts, including tokens, prompts, and LLMs.

Responsibilities

• Working with developers, platform teams, and technical leaders worldwide to troubleshoot complex issues and help them get the most out of Kong products and technologies.
• Leading technical investigations using logs, metrics, configuration, code, and customer context to understand the problem and drive it towards resolution.
• Collaborating with customers, teammates, Product, and Engineering to diagnose difficult issues, identify root causes, and recommend practical next steps.
• Taking ownership of high-impact and escalated support cases, ensuring communication is clear, timely, and appropriate for both technical and business stakeholders.
• Creating knowledge articles that complement our documentation and help customers better understand product behaviour, troubleshooting approaches, and real-world use cases.
• Sharing knowledge with other support engineers through mentoring, case reviews, technical enablement, and support-led documentation.
• Driving improvement within the support team by finding better ways to work, improving the tools we use, and raising the bar on the service we deliver to enterprise customers.
• Providing structured feedback to Product and Engineering based on customer issues, recurring support patterns, product gaps, and operational challenges seen in the field.
• Weekend on-call duties

Skills

REST APIs

Code reading

Troubleshooting

Stakeholder communication

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

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, please apply. 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.

About the role:

Kong enables the connectivity layer for the agentic era, with a focus on securely connecting, governing, and monetizing APIs and AI tokens across any model or cloud.

As a Staff Technical Support Engineer, you will lead the investigation and resolution of complex customer issues, often in production environments where Kong is part of critical infrastructure. You will help customers understand what is happening, identify practical solutions, and move forward with confidence.

You will work closely with customers, teammates, partners, Product, and Engineering on issues involving Kong products, including Kong Konnect, Kong Gateway, AI Gateway, and more. You will take ownership of cases, lead deep technical investigations, handle escalations, and provide feedback that helps improve our products and support experience.

This role is ideal for someone who enjoys solving complex technical problems, working with customers in business-critical situations, and helping to raise the quality of the support we provide.

What you’ll be doing:

• Working with developers, platform teams, and technical leaders worldwide to troubleshoot complex issues and help them get the most out of Kong products and technologies.
• Leading technical investigations using logs, metrics, configuration, code, and customer context to understand the problem and drive it towards resolution.
• Collaborating with customers, teammates, Product, and Engineering to diagnose difficult issues, identify root causes, and recommend practical next steps.
• Taking ownership of high-impact and escalated support cases, ensuring communication is clear, timely, and appropriate for both technical and business stakeholders.
• Creating knowledge articles that complement our documentation and help customers better understand product behaviour, troubleshooting approaches, and real-world use cases.
• Sharing knowledge with other support engineers through mentoring, case reviews, technical enablement, and support-led documentation.
• Driving improvement within the support team by finding better ways to work, improving the tools we use, and raising the bar on the service we deliver to enterprise customers.
• Providing structured feedback to Product and Engineering based on customer issues, recurring support patterns, product gaps, and operational challenges seen in the field.
• Weekend on-call duties

What you bring:

Some of the skills and experience you will regularly use include:

• You are curious, persistent, and comfortable digging into complex technical issues to understand what is happening and find a practical path forward.
• You can build strong relationships with teammates, customers, and global partners.
• You are comfortable leading technical conversations with customers, including during high-pressure or business-critical situations.
• You can explain complex technical issues clearly, both in writing and in live customer conversations.
• Strong understanding of REST and RESTful APIs.
• Coding skills, with the ability to at least read, understand, and troubleshoot code.
• Highly experienced with containers, cluster deployment, and management tools such as Docker and Kubernetes.
• Strong understanding of web architectures, including HTTP.
• Basic proficiency in AI concepts, including tokens, prompts, and LLMs.
• 5+ years of experience in a customer-facing technical role.
• Prior experience with Kong products is a plus, but not essential.

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.