SlipstreamJobs tracks this role from the company's public career site. Apply directly on the employer's site.
Kong is building the connectivity layer for AI, providing a unified API and AI platform trusted by Fortune 500 companies and AI-native startups. As a Senior Software Engineer on the Core Team, you will design, build, and maintain API management software and its underlying infrastructure.
You will be responsible for architecting and implementing innovative features including proxying capabilities, load balancing, and database support that extend Kong's core offering. Your work will involve performance tuning, low-level optimizations, and troubleshooting bugs in highly scalable distributed systems. You'll engage with the open-source community, extend Kong's core to support emerging industry trends, and bridge gaps between Kong and third-party deployment platforms and tooling.
This role requires deep expertise in systems programming, Linux networking, and distributed systems architecture. You'll work with APIs across both L7 and L4 transports and protocols. Strong communication skills are essential—engineers at Kong document their own products. You'll be part of a globally distributed team and contribute to shaping the future of API and AI connectivity infrastructure.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 8+ years of programming experience in server-side applications and components
- Proven experience designing, prototyping, building, and debugging highly scalable, distributed, reliable, and resilient applications
- Solid hands-on expertise in Linux systems troubleshooting and profiling
- Deep 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:
- Hands-on experience with NGINX, OpenResty, Kong, or LuaJIT
- Hands-on experience with Envoy or Istio
- Hands-on experience with Rust
