Forward Deployed Engineer

What You’ll Do

• Partner directly with enterprise customers to design, build, and implement Kong-based solutions across cloud, hybrid, and on-premise environments
• Lead hands-on implementation efforts for API gateways, AI gateways, service mesh, developer portals, and related connectivity technologies
• Build automation frameworks, migration tooling, custom integrations, and reusable accelerators to simplify customer adoption and modernization efforts
• Drive migration initiatives from legacy API management platforms to Kong
• Work closely with customer developers, platform teams, architects, security teams, and executives to solve complex technical and operational challenges
• Develop production-grade code, scripts, plugins, CI/CD integrations, Kubernetes automation, and infrastructure tooling as part of customer engagements
• Collaborate with Kong Product and Engineering teams to influence roadmap priorities based on real-world customer feedback and implementation learnings
• Create reusable best practices, technical assets, reference architectures, documentation, and design patterns to scale delivery excellence across the organization
• Support strategic customer initiatives involving AI connectivity, governance, platform modernization, and cloud-native transformation

What You’ll Bring

Experience

• 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
• Experience with API gateways, API management, integrations, or distributed systems platforms
• Strong Kubernetes and cloud-native infrastructure expertise
• Experience building automation frameworks, deployment tooling, CI/CD pipelines, or migration tooling
• Strong proficiency in Linux, networking, cloud infrastructure, and DevOps practices
• Experience with major cloud providers including AWS, Azure, or GCP
• Programming experience in languages such as Python, Go, Java, JavaScript, or Lua
• Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code and automation tooling such as Terraform, Helm, Ansible, or GitOps frameworks
• Prior experience working in API Management, Open Source, Middleware, SaaS, or Infrastructure software companies is highly preferred

Preferred Attributes

• 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