[Hiring] Staff Forward Deployed Engineer @Kong

Role Description

Join the global leader in API and AI governance in the era of Artificial Intelligence! We are seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) to join Kong’s growing Professional Services organization. This is a highly strategic, customer-facing engineering role focused on helping enterprise customers accelerate adoption of Kong’s API and AI Connectivity platform through hands-on implementation, automation, migration tooling, and solution engineering.

• Work directly alongside customer engineering teams to solve complex technical challenges.
• Accelerate migrations, build reusable automation, and deliver production-grade solutions in real-world enterprise environments.
• Operate at the intersection of software engineering, architecture, platform engineering, and customer delivery.
• Collaborate closely with Solutions Architects, Engagement Managers, Product Engineering, Customer Success, and Product teams.
• Make a massive impact on Fortune 50/500 customers as they modernize mission-critical systems for the AI era.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in customer-facing engineering, platform engineering, professional services, site reliability engineering, or software engineering roles.
• Strong hands-on software engineering and implementation experience.
• Experience with API gateways, API management, integrations, or distributed systems platforms.
• Strong Kubernetes and cloud-native infrastructure expertise.
• Experience building automation frameworks, deployment tooling, CI/CD pipelines, or migration tooling.
• Strong proficiency in Linux, networking, cloud infrastructure, and DevOps practices.
• Experience with major cloud providers including AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Programming experience in languages such as Python, Go, Java, JavaScript, or Lua.
• Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code and automation tooling such as Terraform, Helm, Ansible, or GitOps frameworks.
• Prior experience working in API Management, Open Source, Middleware, SaaS, or Infrastructure software companies is highly preferred.

Requirements

• Strong builder mindset with the ability to solve complex technical problems with minimal supervision.
• Comfortable operating in ambiguous, fast-moving enterprise environments.
• Passion for working directly with customers and delivering measurable business outcomes.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills across technical and executive audiences.
• Highly organized with strong prioritization and execution skills.
• Passion for innovation, modern infrastructure, APIs, AI, and cloud-native technologies.
• Team-oriented with a strong sense of ownership and accountability.

Benefits

• Accelerate your technical and professional growth through exposure to cutting-edge cloud-native technologies, distributed systems, AI connectivity, automation frameworks, and large-scale enterprise architectures.
• Be part of a rapidly growing Professional Services organization that is shaping how enterprises adopt APIs, AI gateways, and modern connectivity platforms globally.

Company Description

Kong Inc., 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. For more information, visit www.konghq.com .