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. The Control Plane team architects the central nervous system of Kong's entire ecosystem, building high-performance, resilient, and scalable services that enable users to configure and manage billions of API calls with confidence.
In this role, you will design and implement core features for the Kong Gateway Control Plane, primarily using Golang. You will own the full lifecycle of services, from architectural design and implementation through deployment and operational excellence. You'll lead technical discussions and architectural decisions to prevent technical debt and ensure the platform maintains 99.99% uptime. Your work will influence the technical roadmap for cloud-native components, advocating for best practices in distributed systems environments.
You'll mentor other engineers through thoughtful code reviews and design sessions, fostering a culture of high-quality code and developer delight. Collaboration is central to the role—you'll work closely with product managers and other engineering teams to architect and deliver impactful solutions for a global user base. You'll also resolve complex bugs and performance bottlenecks in core networking and configuration management components.
Kong values ownership (proactive, self-starting mindset with bias for action), urgency (thriving in a fast-paced, pre-IPO environment), and collaboration (excellent communication and team-first attitude).
REQUIREMENTS:
- Significant professional experience writing and deploying production services in Golang
- Deep understanding of distributed systems, microservices architecture, and API design principles
- Hands-on experience with Kubernetes (K8s) and the cloud-native ecosystem
- Proficiency with relational databases, such as PostgreSQL
- Familiarity with modern CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure-as-code practices
BONUS:
- Experience with API gateways, service mesh (like Kuma), or related networking technologies
- Active contributions to open-source projects
- Knowledge of Lua or NGINX internals
- Experience building and managing large-scale SaaS platforms
