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.

About the role:
As a member of a team, you’ll need strong technical skills and a solid background in Computer science and technology to be able to accept various challenges, make valuable contributions, and generally have a great experience in Kong. You will have the opportunity to influence the culture, facilitate technical delivery, and collaborate with your team on the strategy and execution of our key product.

What you'll be doing:

Work on our proxy stack which is based on Nginx/OpenResty.
Organize and prioritize complex problem resolution and bug fixes, debugging distributed services.
Contribute to the Kong Gateway OSS and Enterprise product.

What you'll bring:

At least 8 year of experience in computer operating systems and deep understanding of Linux system runtime and networking stack.
Solid hands-on low-level technical experience in Linux systems troubleshooting and profiling, experience in debugging tools such as gdb, systemtap, tcpdump, crash, etc.
Experience with public cloud providers like AWS, GCP or Azure.
Fluent English language skills including both written and verbal.

Bonus Points:

Hands-on experience with building and maintaining NGINX/OpenResty-based backend services.
Hands-on experience with Lua/C programming(extra points if experience with LuaJIT)
Hands-on experience with Kubernetes.
Hands-on experience with Kong Gateway/Kubernetes Ingress Controller for Kong.
Experience with developing and maintaining large distributed system.
Experience with developing and maintaining enterprise software.
Being familiar with Rust is a plus.

#LI-CL1

About Kong:

Kong Inc., a leading developer of API and AI connectivity technologies, is building the infrastructure that powers the agentic era. Trusted by the Fortune 500 and startups alike, Kong's unified API and AI platform, Kong Konnect, enables organizations to secure, manage, accelerate, govern, and monetize the flow of intelligence across APIs and AI models. For more information, visit www.konghq.com.

Staff Software Engineer, Gateway Enterprise - Shanghai