Kong
Forward Deployed Engineer
About this role
Kong is hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer to work directly with enterprise customers on implementing and accelerating adoption of Kong's API and AI Connectivity platform. You'll combine hands-on engineering with customer-facing delivery, building automation, migration tooling, and production solutions across cloud-native environments.
What you'll do
- Design and implement Kong-based API gateway and AI gateway solutions for enterprise customers in cloud, hybrid, and on-premise environments
- Build automation frameworks, migration tooling, custom integrations, and reusable accelerators for customer modernization initiatives
- Lead hands-on implementation efforts and drive migrations from legacy API management platforms to Kong
- Develop production-grade code, plugins, CI/CD integrations, Kubernetes automation, and infrastructure tooling
- Collaborate with customer teams (developers, platform engineers, architects, security) to solve complex technical and operational challenges
- Influence Kong's product roadmap based on field experience and customer feedback; create reference architectures and best practices
What they're looking for
- 8+ years in customer-facing engineering, platform engineering, SRE, or software engineering
- Strong hands-on software engineering and implementation expertise
- API gateway, API management, integrations, or distributed systems experience
- Kubernetes and cloud-native infrastructure expertise
- Proficiency in Linux, networking, cloud infrastructure, and DevOps practices
- Experience building automation frameworks, deployment tooling, and CI/CD pipelines
- Programming languages (Go, Python, Java, or similar)
- AWS, Azure, or GCP cloud platform experience
Benefits
- Work directly with Fortune 50/500 enterprises on mission-critical API and AI modernization
- Exposure to cutting-edge cloud-native technologies and large-scale distributed systems
- Growth opportunities in technical and professional development
- Influence Kong's product direction through field experience
- Part of a rapidly growing Professional Services organization
Opens the application — the Jobs AI extension fills it for you. Set up autofill
Opens the official application on the employer’s site. No login required.
Kong
Kong builds an API and AI gateway platform for cloud-native environments that enables enterprise customers to manage connectivity and integrations. The company is hiring Forward Deployed Engineers who combine hands-on software engineering with direct customer collaboration to implement, optimize, and migrate to Kong's solutions.
- Website
- konghq.com
Likely interview questions
- Describe a complex customer implementation you led—what technical challenges arose and how did you solve them?
- Walk us through your experience migrating systems from legacy platforms; how did you approach planning and automation?