Staff/Senior/Mid-level Software Engineer, API Gateway

Are you ready to power the World's connections?

If you don't think you meet all of the criteria below but are still interested in the job, please apply. Nobody checks every box - we're looking for candidates that are particularly strong in a few areas, and have some interest and capabilities in others.

About the role:

Kong is an Open-Core project. Its foundation is the Open-source API Gateway. On top of that there is an Enterprise Gateway, which extends and improves it. The Enterprise Gateway is the central piece of the Kong ecosystem, which includes other pieces of software and infrastructure that add even more value.

Your main responsibility will be developing, maintaining and extending the Kong Gateway, on both its Open-source and the Enterprise versions. You will engage with the Open Source community, and work closely with other teams in the company to improve it. You will be responsible for building foundations for other teams and customers, discovering and producing cutting edge industry trends and use-cases.

The job is fully remote for people in Europe. Kong can currently hire in Ireland, Italy, Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, France or the United Kingdom.

• Why should you want to work at Kong?
• Market Opportunity - We are on a quest to build a $10b+ software company over the next few years and need YOUR help!
• APIs are driving innovation across every industry!
• Strong VC team, Series D, strong year over year revenue growth!
• Technical Leadership - We are recognized as the leader in innovation in the connectivity space.
• Marco, our CTO/co-founder - "We are the Cisco of L4 and L7" - CUBE Conversation, March 2021
• We are the leading innovator in the connectivity space!
• Amazing Team & Culture - Come be a "Konger" and find out what we mean.
• Great Place to Work Certified in 2020 & 2021
• Kong employees discuss our culture at our 2020 Company Kickoff
• Building Great Products - Learn why the world's largest companies love our tech!
• Kong Named a Leader in the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant
• Over 250m+ downloads of our open source API gateway! Over 40k+ stars on Github between Kong API and Kong Insomnia!

You will and other duties:

• Work with the Product management team to identify and implement enhancements.
• Work closely with engineering teams to architecture, design, and understand upcoming new features.
• Bug fixing, performance tuning and low-level optimizations.
• Engage with the open source community.
• Provide help to the support and escalation teams.
• Mentoring and pairing with other team members.
• And any additional tasks required by manager.

What We Look For:

• Comfortable working in a remote distributed team, with minimal supervision.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, both as a means to work with others and to write documentation.
• Solid hands-on low-level technical expertise for Linux systems troubleshooting, and profiling.
• Experience in any of the following: IdP/AuthZ systems and integration, monitoring and profiling systems, network traffic inspection.
• Experience designing, prototyping, building and debugging applications that are highly scalable, distributed, reliable and resilient.
• Familiarity with a scripting language. Lua would be the ideal, but Perl, Python, or Ruby also serve.
• You've spent time developing and supporting a large scale SaaS platform.
• You have at least 5-ish years working in a team to develop, package and deliver server-side applications and components.

Bonus Points:

• Experience with NGINX/OpenResty/Kong/LuaJIT.
• Experience with Envoy or Istio.
• Understanding of VM implementations like eBPF and/or WASM.

We are an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or veteran status.

What is a Konger?

We are a group of makers, thinkers, and doers focused on helping today's developers build tomorrow's technology. Our teams work on the bleeding edge of API innovation to provide our users with a central nervous system for data and services.

We put design at the heart of everything we do, and we're relentlessly focused on creating beautiful experiences for our customers. That's why technology companies, major banks, e-commerce innovators, and government agencies put Kong in front of their most important web applications.

We believe in the power of Open Source and everything it stands for. That's why developers around the world enthusiastically contribute on top of our open-source platform.

We are passionate about solving challenges that will fundamentally shape the future of technology, and we're looking for the right people to join us on our mission. If you believe in taking ownership of your work, making an impact, and having fun along the way, we would love to talk to you.

Kong Core Values:

• Be Inclusive. We work together from anywhere to achieve our common goals. Our differences make us stronger.
• Be Authentic. We are genuine, principled and confident without arrogance. Show respect and kindness, especially in tough moments.
• Be Relentlessly Resourceful. We work with purpose, obsession and grit. It takes muscle to do hard things and doing hard things build muscle.
• Be Customer Obsessed. We care. Customers are everything, we put them at the center of everything you do. We are all empowered to make an impact.
• Be Curious. We value ideas over hierarchy. Never accept the status quo. We make bold bets, fail, and learn everyday. There is always a way.
• Be an Owner. We are drivers not passengers and own the quality and outcomes of our work.

About Kong:

Kong creates software and managed services that connect APIs and microservices natively across and within clouds, Kubernetes, data centers and more using intelligent automation. Built on an open source core, Kong's service connectivity platform enables digital innovation by allowing organizations to reliably and securely manage the full lifecycle of APIs and services for modern architectures, including microservices, serverless and service mesh. By providing developer teams with unprecedented architectural freedom, Kong accelerates innovation cycles, increases productivity, and seamlessly bridges legacy and modern systems and applications. For more information about Kong, please visit konghq.com or follow @thekonginc on Twitter.