Kong
Director of Engineering, API Management
Job Summary
This role involves leading a 30-person engineering organization focused on API Management products within the Kong platform, including the Developer Portal, Service Catalog, and Integrations. The candidate should have extensive experience building and scaling SaaS platforms, with a strong emphasis on AWS and operational reliability. Responsibilities include strategic planning, architectural decision-making, and driving product innovation in a high-growth environment. The position requires a seasoned engineering leader with over 10 years of experience, capable of managing large teams and working closely with product teams to shape the market and deliver business impact.
Required Skills
Job Description
Are you ready to power the World's connections?
About The Role
Join us at a pivotal moment in Kong’s journey. As we scale our flagship API Management capability within the Konnect platform, we're seeking a seasoned engineering leader to shape the future of an integrated SaaS offering that includes our Developer Portal, Service Catalog, and API Productization capabilities. These products are not only critical to our growth strategy—with independent revenue targets and strong early traction—but they also represent our vision to lead the API Management space. This is a rare opportunity to have an outsized impact on a high-visibility, high-growth part of the business at a company shaping the future of connectivity.
In this role, you’ll lead a 30-person engineering organization across three core teams:
Developer Portal, Service Catalog, and Integrations. You’ll bring strong architectural instincts, hands-on engineering leadership, and the operational rigor to scale a fast-growing platform. Engineering Managers at Kong are technical leaders, expected to engage deeply in design reviews, architectural decisions, and strategic planning. You’ll work closely with Product leadership to drive innovation and define market direction—this is not just about running an existing product line, but about building what’s next.
This role will report to the Vice President of Cloud Engineering.
- Lead and grow a high-performing team of engineers who are passionate about building world-class developer experiences and API infrastructure.
- Collaborate closely with Product to define and execute a bold, forward-thinking roadmap that sets the standard for API Management across the industry.
- Establish yourself and your team as visionary leaders in the API Management space, shaping the direction of the market with innovative thinking and execution.
- Build for resilience and scale, ensuring our SaaS platform is robust, reliable, and ready for global demand.
- Engage with some of the world’s largest enterprises, helping Fortune 1000 companies solve complex API Management challenges at scale.
- Drive tangible business impact by contributing directly to revenue goals in one of Kong’s fastest-growing product areas.
- Monitor and manage infrastructure and operational costs to ensure we scale efficiently without compromising performance or reliability.
- Deep, hands-on experience building and scaling SaaS products from the ground up: you’ve done this before and know what both success and misfires look like.
- A strong track record of leading high-uptime, customer-facing SaaS platforms, with experience delivering software that operates at 99.99% reliability or better.
- Proven ability to manage costs while maintaining performance and healthy margins.
- 10+ years of engineering leadership experience, including 5+ years as a manager of managers and prior ownership at a Director-level or higher.
- Demonstrated success operating and scaling engineering teams within fast-paced, high-growth environments.
- Deep familiarity with SaaS architecture and operational practices on AWS. Experience specifically on AWS is a hard requirement.
- A steady, seasoned presence—you’ve “been around the block,” know how to navigate ambiguity, and thrive when leading through change and complexity.
About Kong:
Kong is THE cloud native API platform with the fastest, most adopted API gateway in the world (over 300m downloads!). As the innovation leader of cloud API technologies, Kong is on a mission to enable companies around the world to become "API-first" and securely accelerate AI adoption. Kong helps organizations globally - from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises - unleash developer productivity, build securely and accelerate to market.
83% of web traffic today is API calls! APIs are the connective tissue of the cloud and the underlying technology that allows software to talk and interact with one another. Therefore, we believe that APIs act as the nervous system of the cloud. Our audacious mission is to build the nervous system that will safely and reliably connect all of humankind!
For more information about Kong, please visitkonghq.com or follow @thekonginc on Twitter. We are an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or veteran status. The compensation pay range for the role is USD215,460 - 280,040.
Kong
Kong is the most widely adopted API gateway and service mesh, powering the world’s APIs for modern architectures. Accelerate development and productivity today!
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