
Developer Advocate - Volcano at Kong (United States)
Kong· United States·
Role details
Kong at a glance
Kong runs the unified API and AI platform that connects, secures, governs, and monetizes APIs, events, and AI traffic.
Kong provides a unified API and AI platform. Its open-source Kong Gateway handles API traffic at the edge, while Kong Konnect adds a managed control plane to design, secure, observe, and monetize APIs, events, and AI requests across any cloud. The AI Gateway extends the same governance model to LLMs, MCP servers, and agents.
$345M raised · latest: Series E · $175M · 2024 (at $2B valuation) · backed by Tiger Global, Balderton, Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures
Job description
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: Volcano (volcano.dev) is a cloud for apps built with coding agents. You tell Claude Code, Cursor or Codex what you want, and it sets up the database, auth, functions, storage, realtime and deploys on Volcano without a trip through a dashboard. Most platforms were designed around a person in a console and added agent support later. We started from the agent. We're a small team and launched publicly in September 2026. Volcano is incubated by Kong and runs as its own company with its own brand. This role sits between engineering and the developers we build for. You'll build on Volcano constantly, show people what it can do, and bring back what you learn so the product gets better.
What You'll Do:
- Own the Volcano Cookbook: recipes that build real apps on Volcano with tools developers already use, written up with the code, the decisions and the gotchas.
- Build templates and examples people can deploy in one step.
- Make video, including YouTube, streams and short demos.
- Run Volcano hackathons, show up at others, and decide which sponsorships are worth doing.
- Work with the companies whose tools appear in our recipes on joint content.
- Spend time where developers ask questions, in Discord, on X and on GitHub, and bring what you hear back to the team.
- Build the tooling and workflows that let a small team publish more without the quality slipping.
- Be customer zero. You'll hit rough edges before users do, and engineers should be able to act on your reports.
Who You'll Bring:
- You've built things in public in the last year and can show us what you shipped and how you told people about it.
- You've done 0-to-1 work: started a company, joined one early, or launched something from nothing.
- You're technical and fluent with coding agents. You don't need to be a database or infrastructure expert, but you can build a working app with Claude Code or similar, debug it when it breaks, and explain what happened.
- You write well. You use AI in your own workflow, and you can tell when output reads like slop.
- You like explaining things, whether to a room, a camera or a thread of skeptical replies.
- Engineers trust you on technical accuracy.
Bonus Points:
- An existing developer audience
- Hackathon organizing experience
- Experience with developer platforms like Vercel, Supabase, Neon or Cloudflare.
#LI-BR2
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.
Why work at Kong
- Remote‑first culture – 600+ employees across 25+ countries; strong emphasis on global collaboration.
- Perks & benefits (from careers page):
- Stock options for most employees
- 4‑week paid sabbatical every 5 years
- Flexible time off
- Home office stipend
- Regular “unplug days” (company‑wide long weekends)
- Virtual events (Donut chats, trivia, fitness challenges)
- Engineering culture – values “owners, explorers, real, unstoppable” and encourages individual innovation. Focus on shipping fast and high trust.
- Growth trajectory – company is scaling (+23.5% headcount YoY) and is a unicorn with clear product‑market fit in a hot market (AI + API management).
- Open roles – 93 open positions across engineering, sales, solutions, customer success, and marketing.