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 is an open-source project with a global adoption around the world. Developers and architects are adopting Kong in production among a large variety of use-cases, and actively help make Kong a better product with their feedback and contributions.
As a Systems Engineer in the Core Team, you will be working on core features such as proxying capabilities, load balancing, and database support with forward-thinking. You will be responsible for building foundations for other teams and customers, discovering and producing cutting edge industry trends and use-cases.
What You'll Do:
Responsible for designing, building and maintaining API management software and its underlying stack.
Architecture, design, and implement new innovative features including proxying capabilities, load balancing, databases support that extend Kong’s offering.
Bugs troubleshooting, performance tuning and low-level optimizations. Engage with open source community and extend Kong core to support the latest industry trends.
Fill the gaps between Kong and third-party deployment platforms and tooling.
And any additional tasks required by manager.
What You'll Bring:
8+ years of programming in server-side applications and components.
Experience designing, prototyping, building and debugging applications that are highly scalable, distributed, reliable and resilient.
Solid hands-on low-level technical expertise in Linux systems troubleshooting, and profiling.
Experience in distributed systems, Linux networking stack and computer systems programming, Kong works with APIs on both L7 and L4 transports and protocols, so this expertise and knowledge are required.
Comfortable working with a remotely distributed team.
Strong sense of ownership and excellent verbal and written communication skills -- engineers at Kong write the documentation for their products
Familiarity with AI LLM concepts and applications development
Bonus Points:
Hands on experience with NGINX/OpenResty/Kong/LuaJIT.
Hands on experience with Envoy or Istio.
Hands on experience with Rust
About Kong:
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.
Summary
Build and maintain API management software and its underlying stack, including proxying, load balancing, and database support. Requires 8+ years of server-side programming, distributed systems and Linux networking expertise, and familiarity with AI LLM concepts. Bonus experience with NGINX, OpenResty, Kong, LuaJIT, Envoy, Istio, or Rust.
Responsibilities
Design, build and maintain API management software and underlying stack; architect proxying, load balancing, and database support; troubleshoot bugs, tune performance, and optimize low-level code; engage with open source community; fill gaps between Kong and third-party deployment platforms and tooling.
Qualifications
8+ years of server-side programming; experience designing scalable, distributed, reliable, resilient applications; hands-on Linux systems troubleshooting and profiling; distributed systems and Linux networking expertise; familiarity with AI LLM concepts; strong ownership and communication skills; bonus experience with NGINX/OpenResty/Kong/LuaJIT, Envoy/Istio, or Rust.
Experience requirements
8+ years of programming in server-side applications and components.