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Kong is building API and AI infrastructure that powers connectivity for thousands of organizations globally. The company's platform enables developers to build and run AI-driven systems at scale across APIs, microservices, Kubernetes, and LLM-driven applications.
You'll join Kong's Office of the CTO (OCTO), a team focused on ambitious, exploratory engineering work on new platforms, foundational systems, and high-impact technical bets that shape the company's future. This is a rare opportunity to shape a greenfield AI platform from the ground up with direct input into architecture, tooling, and developer experience.
In this role, you'll design and build highly scalable distributed backend systems, develop core services in Golang with a focus on performance and reliability, and work with PostgreSQL and Redis to build robust, data-intensive systems. You'll architect systems that operate across microservices, networking layers, and cloud platforms, collaborate closely with the CTO and senior engineers on strategic technical initiatives, and prototype and productionize new platform capabilities and internal tooling. You'll also influence engineering direction and technical standards across Kong.
You should have strong production experience with Golang, experience designing and operating distributed systems at scale, solid experience with PostgreSQL and Redis in production environments, and a track record building backend systems with high availability, scalability, and reliability. Strong systems thinking, debugging, and performance optimization skills are essential.
Bonus experience includes Kubernetes, networking, or API gateways; cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure); open source contributions; or work on platform, infrastructure, or developer tooling products. This role is ideal for engineers who enjoy deep technical challenges, ambiguity, and building systems that matter.
