Forward Deployed Engineer

Kong Inc.

Job Overview

Location

Remote - New Jersey

Job Type

Full-time

Full Job Description

📋 Description

• Are you a seasoned engineer with a passion for solving complex technical challenges and a desire to work directly with enterprise customers? Kong Inc., the global leader in API and AI governance, is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) to join our dynamic Professional Services organization. This is a pivotal, customer-facing role where you will be instrumental in helping our enterprise clients accelerate their adoption of Kong’s cutting-edge API and AI Connectivity platform. You will leverage your deep technical expertise to drive hands-on implementation, develop sophisticated automation, create essential migration tooling, and engineer robust solutions that address the evolving needs of businesses in the AI-driven era. As API traffic continues to surge and become a critical component of online activity, with a significant portion powered by the Kong platform, your role will be at the forefront of enterprise transformation, ensuring seamless and secure connectivity for AI-powered applications and services.
• In this role, you will immerse yourself in the day-to-day realities of our customers' technical environments. You will partner directly with customer engineering teams, acting as a trusted advisor and hands-on implementer. Your responsibilities will include designing, building, and deploying Kong-based solutions across diverse infrastructures, encompassing cloud, hybrid, and on-premise deployments. You will take the lead on hands-on implementation efforts for key components of our platform, such as API gateways, AI gateways, service mesh technologies, developer portals, and other related connectivity solutions. A significant part of your work will involve developing and enhancing automation frameworks, creating migration tooling to facilitate transitions from legacy systems, building custom integrations, and crafting reusable accelerators that streamline the customer adoption process and accelerate modernization initiatives. You will be a key driver in migration projects, guiding customers from older API management platforms to the advanced capabilities of Kong.
• Your daily interactions will involve close collaboration with a wide array of customer stakeholders, including developers, platform teams, architects, security specialists, and executive leadership. Together, you will tackle intricate technical and operational challenges, ensuring that Kong’s platform is optimally integrated and performing within their ecosystems. You will be responsible for developing production-grade code, writing efficient scripts, creating custom plugins, establishing CI/CD integrations, automating Kubernetes deployments, and building essential infrastructure tooling as integral parts of customer engagements. Furthermore, you will play a crucial role in bridging the gap between the field and our product teams. By collaborating closely with Kong Product and Engineering teams, you will provide invaluable real-world customer feedback and implementation learnings to influence roadmap priorities and drive product innovation. Your expertise will also be leveraged to create reusable best practices, develop comprehensive technical assets, design reference architectures, author detailed documentation, and establish design patterns that promote delivery excellence and scalability across the entire Professional Services organization. You will actively support strategic customer initiatives focused on AI connectivity, robust governance, comprehensive platform modernization, and seamless cloud-native transformations, ensuring our clients are well-equipped for the future.
• You will be an integral part of Kong’s rapidly expanding Professional Services organization, a team dedicated to shaping the global adoption of APIs, AI gateways, and modern connectivity platforms. This is a unique opportunity to make a profound impact on Fortune 50/500 customers as they undertake the critical task of modernizing their mission-critical systems for the AI era. You will gain unparalleled exposure to cutting-edge cloud-native technologies, complex distributed systems, advanced AI connectivity paradigms, sophisticated automation frameworks, and large-scale enterprise architectures. This exposure will significantly accelerate your technical and professional growth, equipping you with in-demand skills and deep industry knowledge. By working directly with some of the world's largest enterprises, you will witness firsthand how API infrastructure is being modernized and how AI adoption is being accelerated through Kong’s powerful connectivity platform, providing you with a unique perspective on industry trends and best practices.

🎯 Requirements

• 8+ years in customer-facing engineering, platform engineering, professional services, site reliability engineering, or software engineering roles.
• Strong hands-on software engineering and implementation experience, with a proven track record of building and deploying complex solutions.
• Experience with API gateways, API management, integrations, or distributed systems platforms, demonstrating a solid understanding of these technologies.
• Strong Kubernetes and cloud-native infrastructure expertise, including deployment, management, and optimization within cloud environments.
• Experience building automation frameworks, deployment tooling, CI/CD pipelines, or migration tooling, showcasing proficiency in streamlining development and operational processes.
• Strong proficiency in Linux, networking, cloud infrastructure, and DevOps practices, providing a solid foundation for system administration and operational excellence.
• Experience with major cloud providers including AWS, Azure, or GCP, indicating familiarity with leading cloud platforms.
• Programming experience in languages such as Python, Go, Java, JavaScript, or Lua, enabling the development of custom solutions and integrations.
• Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code and automation tooling such as Terraform, Helm, Ansible, or GitOps frameworks, demonstrating a commitment to modern infrastructure management practices.
• Prior experience working in API Management, Open Source, Middleware, SaaS, or Infrastructure software companies is highly preferred, offering valuable industry context.
• Strong builder mindset with the ability to solve complex technical problems with minimal supervision.
• Comfortable operating in ambiguous, fast-moving enterprise environments.
• Passion for working directly with customers and delivering measurable business outcomes.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills across technical and executive audiences.
• Highly organized with strong prioritization and execution skills.
• Passion for innovation, modern infrastructure, APIs, AI, and cloud-native technologies.
• Team-oriented with a strong sense of ownership and accountability.

🏖️ Benefits

• Work directly with some of the world’s largest enterprises to modernize API infrastructure and accelerate AI adoption through Kong’s connectivity platform.
• Accelerate your technical and professional growth through exposure to cutting-edge cloud-native technologies, distributed systems, AI connectivity, automation frameworks, and large-scale enterprise architectures.
• Be part of a rapidly growing Professional Services organization that is shaping how enterprises adopt APIs, AI gateways, and modern connectivity platforms globally.

Skills & Technologies

Python

JavaScript

Java

AWS

Azure

Remote

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Kong Inc.

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About Kong Inc.

Kong Inc. is a San Francisco-based software company that develops an open-source API gateway and service connectivity platform. The company offers Kong Gateway, Kong Mesh, and Konnect cloud services to manage, secure, and observe microservices and APIs across clouds and data centers. Founded in 2007 as Mashape, it rebranded to Kong in 2017. Kong’s technology provides traffic control, authentication, rate limiting, and analytics for modern distributed architectures, supporting organizations in digital transformation and cloud-native adoption.

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