Senior Staff Forward Deployed Engineer
Build and deploy Kong API and AI connectivity solutions for enterprise customers, leading migrations, automation, integrations, and production implementations across cloud-native environments. Requires 8+ years of engineering experience, strong Kubernetes and cloud expertise, and customer-facing technical leadership.
About the job
Responsibilities
- Partner with enterprise customers to design, build, and implement Kong-based solutions across cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments.
- Lead hands-on implementation of API gateways, AI gateways, service meshes, developer portals, and related connectivity technologies.
- Build automation frameworks, migration tooling, custom integrations, and reusable accelerators.
- Drive migrations from legacy API management platforms to Kong.
- Collaborate with customer developers, platform teams, architects, security teams, and executives to solve technical and operational challenges.
- Develop production-grade code, scripts, plugins, CI/CD integrations, Kubernetes automation, and infrastructure tooling.
- Work with Product and Engineering teams to influence roadmap priorities using customer feedback.
- Create reusable best practices, technical assets, reference architectures, documentation, and design patterns.
- Support customer initiatives involving AI connectivity, governance, platform modernization, and cloud-native transformation.
Requirements
- 8+ years of experience in customer-facing engineering, platform engineering, professional services, site reliability engineering, or software engineering.
- 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.
- Proficiency in Linux, networking, cloud infrastructure, and DevOps practices.
- Experience with AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.
- Programming experience with Python, Go, Java, JavaScript, or Lua.
- Experience with infrastructure-as-code and automation tools such as Terraform, Helm, Ansible, or GitOps frameworks.
Nice-to-haves
- Experience in API management, open source, middleware, SaaS, or infrastructure software companies.
- Strong builder mindset and ability to solve complex problems with minimal supervision.
- Comfort working in ambiguous, fast-moving enterprise environments.
- Customer-focused approach with excellent communication and collaboration skills across technical and executive audiences.
- Strong organization, prioritization, ownership, and execution skills.
- Passion for APIs, AI, innovation, modern infrastructure, and cloud-native technologies.
Skills
Kubernetes, Api Gateways, Api Management, Cloud Infrastructure, Linux, Networking, DevOps, CI/CD, Python, Go, Java, JavaScript, Terraform, Helm, Ansible
Similar jobs
Solutions Architecture jobs
Fivetran
Georgia
Leads technical solution design, demonstrations, and proof-of-value engagements for enterprise customers in partnership with sales. Requires 7+ years of enterprise solutions engineering experience, strong data-platform expertise, and willingness to travel at least 30%.
Upside
New York, NY
Build and own a zero-to-one AI-native platform for internal go-to-market teams, embedding with revenue operations to transform workflows and deliver measurable business outcomes. The role requires staff-level engineering depth, production LLM experience, and strong architectural judgment.
Shield AI
San Diego, CAOwn the architecture of an AI development ecosystem that supports data, model, simulation, and deployment workflows for autonomous capabilities. The role requires 10+ years of software architecture experience, strong AI/ML and data architecture expertise, and the ability to lead across complex engineering teams.
RSA
United States
Serves as RSA ID Plus’s senior technical voice, advising strategic enterprise and public-sector customers on identity security, zero trust architecture, and modernization. The role combines executive advisory work, technical evangelism, complex sales-cycle support, competitive strategy, and field enablement.
Temporal
Dallas, TXServe as a strategic technical advisor to enterprise prospects and customers, guiding evaluations, architecture, implementation, and adoption of Temporal. The role requires distributed-systems expertise, application prototyping skills, cloud experience, strong technical communication, and close partnership with sales.