Are you ready to unlock intelligence?
If you don’t think you meet all of the criteria below but are still interested in the job, please apply. Nobody checks every box - we’re looking for candidates that are particularly strong in a few areas, and have some interest and capabilities in others.
THE MISSION
Kong Cloud Gateways is Kong's foundational cloud-native SaaS platform, powering its managed API and AI Gateway offerings. It provides a multi-tenant control plane, automation, and platform services that let customers securely deploy, operate, and scale dedicated gateway infrastructure with the simplicity of a fully managed cloud service. Behind that experience sits a distributed platform responsible for provisioning, fleet management, software lifecycle, zero-downtime upgrades, observability, security, and multi-region operations across globally distributed cloud infrastructure - built to a target of 99.99% availability, balancing reliability, performance, operational excellence, and infrastructure efficiency at global SaaS scale.
As a Software Engineering Manager for Managed Gateways Infrastructure, you will own and grow Kong's Bangalore-based engineering team, taking full accountability for this multi-tenant SaaS platform. Kong Cloud Gateways is growing 100% YoY, and as enterprises increasingly adopt AI alongside traditional APIs, this platform becomes an increasingly important part of Kong's API and AI strategy - every improvement in automation, scalability, and operational excellence you drive accelerates new platform capabilities and lets product teams innovate faster. Beyond the technical charter, you play a key role in shaping a dynamic engineering culture - one built on urgency, ownership, and first-principles thinking - as the team scales to match the pace of the business.
This is a highly technical, hands-on leadership role - you're expected to stay close to the systems, dig into hard problems alongside your team, and not hesitate to get into the trenches when it matters.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
- Own and grow Kong's Managed Gateways Infrastructure engineering team in Bangalore - scaling the team's capability, raising the technical bar, and staying hands-on in critical implementations and incidents, not just directing from a distance.
- Own the reliability and scalability of a multi-tenant SaaS infrastructure platform serving customers across regions and clouds - every architectural decision has to hold up under multi-tenant load, isolation, and blast-radius considerations, not just single-tenant assumptions.
- Drive 4-9s (99.99%+) availability across Kong's global infrastructure footprint - owning capacity, resilience, and failure-mode design across multi-region, multi-cloud deployments (AWS, Azure, GCP) so Cloud Gateways stays up for customers everywhere, at any scale.
- Act as a direct technical contributor when it counts - complex incidents, architecture reviews, and high-stakes implementations that materially move the needle on Managed Gateways' growth and reliability.
- Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing engineering team building and operating Kong's SaaS infrastructure for Managed Gateways, in direct support of our critical enterprise customer base globally.
- Architect and implement robust, scalable, and fault-tolerant cloud-native systems using technologies like Kubernetes, Golang, and major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP).
- Own the complete operational lifecycle end-to-end - infrastructure, reliability, on-call, incident response, and blameless post-mortems - as one integrated engineering charter, not a separate function.
- Drive developer delight and operational efficiency through automation, self-service tooling, and streamlined workflows for deploying and managing API gateways, while proactively preventing technical debt and reducing operational toil.
- Define, track, and report on key SLOs and SLIs, and advocate for architectural best practices that keep Managed Gateways performant and resilient as it scales.
- Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, engineering, and support teams to influence roadmap decisions and ensure operational readiness for new features.
WHAT YOU'LL BRING
THE TOOLKIT:
- Proven experience leading and managing software engineering teams responsible for infrastructure and reliability in a fast-paced, high-growth environment, with a track record of staying technically hands-on rather than purely delegating.
- Deep, current expertise in designing, deploying, and operating highly available distributed systems on cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) - this role needs someone who can still open a terminal and debug production, not just review architecture diagrams.
- Extensive hands-on experience with Kubernetes (k8s) and container orchestration in production environments.
- Proficiency in Golang or similar modern programming languages for infrastructure automation and service development.
- Strong understanding of observability principles and experience with tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, or similar.
- Demonstrated ability to manage critical incidents personally when needed, perform root cause analysis, and implement effective preventative measures.
- Familiarity with API gateway technologies, service mesh, or network proxies is a significant plus.
THE KONG DNA:
- Ownership: You take full responsibility for the reliability and performance of systems, driving initiatives from conception to completion.
- Urgency: You thrive in dynamic environments, prioritizing critical issues and delivering impactful solutions with speed and precision.
- Collaboration: You build strong relationships, foster open communication, and work effectively across global teams to achieve shared goals.
BONUS POINTS
- Experience with open-source contributions or active participation in SRE/cloud-native communities.
- Certifications in cloud platforms (e.g., AWS Certified DevOps Engineer) or Kubernetes (e.g., CKA, CKAD).
- Background in companies focused on developer tools, infrastructure software, or API management.
About Kong:
Kong Inc., the AI Connectivity Company, is building the connectivity layer of AI. Trusted by the Fortune 500® and AI-native startups alike, Kong’s unified API and AI platform enables organizations to secure, manage, accelerate, govern, and monetize the flow of intelligence across APIs and AI traffic — on any model, any cloud. For more information, visit www.konghq.com http://www.konghq.com.