Kong Architect/Developer

We are looking for an experienced Kong Architect / Senior Developer to design, implement, and maintain our API gateway infrastructure. You will be the subject matter expert for Kong Gateway, driving best practices across API management, security, and platform reliability.

• Key ResponsibilitiesArchitect and implement Kong Gateway (OSS and/or Enterprise) deployments across multiple environments (on-prem, cloud, hybrid)
• Design and enforce API gateway policies including authentication, rate limiting, traffic control, and observability
• Build and maintain custom Kong plugins using Lua and/or Go
• Collaborate with application teams to onboard services and define API contracts
• Define and govern API lifecycle management standards across the organization
• Integrate Kong with upstream/downstream systems: identity providers (OAuth2/OIDC/SAML), service meshes (Kuma, Istio), CI/CD pipelines, and monitoring stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog)
• Champion infrastructure-as-code practices using Terraform, Helm, or decK for Kong configuration management

• Required Skills & Experience5+ years of experience in API gateway or platform engineering roles
• Deep hands-on expertise with Kong Gateway (OSS or Enterprise)
• Strong understanding of RESTful API design, GraphQL, and gRPC
• Proficiency in Lua (for Kong plugin development) and at least one of: Go, Python, or Node.js
• Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, and cloud platforms (AWS, Google Cloud Platform, or Azure)
• Solid knowledge of security protocols: OAuth2, OIDC, JWT, mTLS, API key management
• Familiarity with decK (Kong’’s declarative configuration tool) and GitOps workflows