Staff Design Technologist

About the Role:

Kong is building the future of AI connectivity and API management. We're hiring a Staff Design Technologist to sit at the intersection of product design, design systems, and frontend implementation — shaping how design and engineering work together more effectively at scale.

You'll join our ~20-person Product Design team, reporting to the VP of Design, as the second specialist focused on design systems. Our design systems practice is already strong — you'll contribute across all of it while helping us push into new territory: AI-enabled design workflows, deeper design ↔ engineering convergence, and how we design for emerging agent-driven experiences.

We're looking for someone with strong product and visual design instincts who has the technical fluency and collaboration skills to bridge design and engineering. Roughly half your time will be in design tools; the other half in code, tooling, and cross-functional collaboration

What you'll do

Lead AI-enabled design workflows

• Build and maintain our AI prototyping starter kits, repos, and conventions
• Write internal scripts, tools, and workflows that accelerate how the Product Design team works
• Experiment with MCP Apps (ext-apps) and emerging agent UI patterns — helping establish how Kong designs for AI-native and agent-driven experiences
• Stay close to what's emerging in AI tooling and enable the team on the latest best practices

Be a bridge between design and engineering

• Build trusted, ongoing relationships with frontend engineers
• Help reduce drift between design and implementation systems, in service of both teams

Drive platform UI cohesion

• Collaborate with your design systems colleagues, designers, and engineers to identify or revamp reusable patterns
• Audit and identify opportunities to reduce one-off patterns and improve cross-product cohesion
• Contribute to documentation, usage guidance, and governance — and enable the team effectively on changes

Raise the bar on craft

• Help establish a high standard for visual quality, interaction design, and usability across technical product experiences
• Bring strong judgment around when to follow conventions versus when to push forward
• Partner with designers to improve consistency, polish, and accessibility

What you'll bring

• 8+ years of experience in Design Engineering, Product Design, Design Systems, or similar hybrid roles — rooted in design
• Strong product and visual design instincts, especially for technical or developer-focused products
• Technical fluency with modern frontend systems — enough to collaborate deeply with engineers, contribute meaningfully to shared systems, and build internal tooling
• Hands-on experience with AI tooling, prototyping workflows, or building design-adjacent scripts and automations
• Familiarity with Figma ↔ code workflows — CodeConnect, design tokens, component APIs, Storybook, or similar
• Experience working closely with both designers and frontend engineers as a collaborative partner
• Genuine excitement about where AI is taking product development — and the initiative to help your team get there
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills, with the ability to build trust across disciplines
• Strong systems thinking and ability to balance short-term pragmatism with long-term scalability

Portfolio expectations

A portfolio, site, and/or repo demonstrating:

• Strong visual and interaction design craft
• AI Prototyping, tooling, and technical experimentation
• Design systems and frontend collaboration work
• Multiple examples of driving meaningful impact backed by an effective process