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Kong is an open-source API connectivity platform trusted by Fortune 500 companies and AI-native startups. The company is building the connectivity layer for AI, enabling organizations to secure, manage, accelerate, govern, and monetize API and AI traffic across any model and cloud.
As a Senior Software Engineer on the Core Team, you will design, build, and maintain API management software and its underlying infrastructure. You'll work on core features including proxying capabilities, load balancing, and database support, with a forward-thinking approach to emerging industry trends and use-cases.
Key responsibilities include:
- Designing, building, and maintaining API management software and its underlying stack
- Architecting, designing, and implementing innovative features that extend Kong's capabilities
- Troubleshooting bugs, tuning performance, and conducting low-level optimizations
- Engaging with the open-source community to extend Kong core and support latest industry trends
- Bridging gaps between Kong and third-party deployment platforms and tooling
- Collaborating with a globally distributed team
You'll work across both L7 and L4 transports and protocols, requiring deep expertise in distributed systems and Linux networking. Strong documentation and communication skills are essential, as engineers at Kong write product documentation.
Requirements:
- 8+ years of programming experience in server-side applications and components
- Experience designing, prototyping, building, and debugging highly scalable, distributed, reliable, and resilient applications
- Solid hands-on expertise in Linux systems troubleshooting and profiling
- Strong knowledge of distributed systems, Linux networking stack, and computer systems programming
- Familiarity with AI/LLM concepts and applications development
- Comfortable working with remotely distributed teams
- Strong sense of ownership with excellent verbal and written communication skills
Bonus experience:
- NGINX, OpenResty, Kong, or LuaJIT
- Envoy or Istio
- Rust
