Staff Software Engineer, Managed Gateways

About the role

You will define and evolve the Cloud Gateways platform that serves as the foundation for all managed API and AI Gateway offerings at Kong. This role owns the end-to-end delivery of a distributed, multi-tenant control plane that must deliver 99.99% availability across global deployments. You will solve complex problems in software engineering, distributed systems, and site reliability engineering by building systems that are reliable, scalable, and simple to operate. You will work cross-functionally with product, infrastructure, and operations teams to turn strategic platform goals into resilient technical implementations. This position requires a systems mindset to balance trade-offs between feature velocity, operational stability, and infrastructure efficiency. You will lead technical strategy for core platform capabilities while mentoring engineers and influencing best practices across engineering organizations. Success in this role means you are comfortable owning problems that span code, cloud infrastructure, and operational workflows from design through production.

Key facts

What you'll do

Own the end-to-end architecture and evolution of the Cloud Gateways platform that powers managed API and AI Gateway services.

Design and implement distributed systems patterns that deliver high availability, scalability, and operational simplicity across Kubernetes and public cloud providers.

Define and enforce standards for observability, reliability, and security across the platform and ensure alignment with enterprise requirements.

Drive operational excellence by establishing SLIs, SLOs, and error budgets while maintaining 99.99% availability objectives for critical platform services.

Lead the design of zero-downtime provisioning, software lifecycle management, and fleet-wide orchestration for thousands of gateway deployments.

Build automation and self-healing mechanisms that reduce manual operations and improve resilience across globally distributed infrastructure.

Collaborate with product and infrastructure teams to deliver platform capabilities that enable faster innovation and consistent customer experiences.

Investigate and resolve complex production incidents, conducting deep root cause analysis and implementing long-term systemic fixes.

Partner with cross-functional teams to translate business requirements into robust, scalable, and maintainable platform solutions.

Champion engineering best practices including code quality, testing, documentation, and knowledge sharing across distributed teams.

Contribute to the design of multi-region architectures that meet strict security, compliance, and performance standards.

Evaluate and integrate cloud-native technologies to improve platform efficiency, developer experience, and operational scalability.

Mentor engineers by providing technical guidance, conducting code reviews, and elevating the overall quality of platform implementations.

Continuously explore emerging patterns in cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, and AI gateway requirements to future-proof the platform.

Requirements

Bring 8 or more years of professional software engineering experience with a strong track record of delivering complex systems.

Demonstrate expert-level proficiency in Go, including performance optimization, concurrency patterns, and production-grade networking.

Show deep experience designing, building, and operating distributed systems that run reliably at global scale.

Have hands-on expertise with Kubernetes, container orchestration, and cloud services on AWS, Azure, and GCP.

Possess a strong understanding of infrastructure concepts including networking, load balancing, service discovery, and observability.

Exhibit mastery of software design principles, patterns, and practices relevant to building scalable and maintainable platforms.

Bring proven experience in building and operating control planes, including lifecycle management, automated upgrades, and fleet orchestration.

Show a relentless focus on operational excellence, including monitoring, alerting, SLOs, and incident response in production environments.

Nice to have

Experience contributing to open-source projects relevant to cloud infrastructure, APIs, or developer platforms.

Familiarity with API gateway patterns, security, and authentication/authorization mechanisms.

Understanding of AI gateway concepts and emerging use cases around LLM integration and observability.

Practical notes

No information about hours, travel, visa, or deadlines provided in the source.

About KONG

KONG is hiring for Staff Software Engineer, Managed Gateways. The listing location is Bangalore, India.

This Staff Software Engineer, Managed Gateways opening is posted for Bangalore, India.