Senior Software Engineer, AI Gateway - Shanghai at Kong (Shanghai, China)

Kong· Shanghai, China·5d ago

Role details

Work type

Onsite

Employment

Full-Time

Level

Senior

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: As Kong advances into the Agentic Era, the AI Gateway team is developing the vital infrastructure that links enterprise systems with generative AI technologies. In this position, you will focus on engineering the core system powering live AI traffic. You will take ownership of the runtime and data plane responsible for routing, translating, securing, and analyzing every request, ensuring performance, security, and scalability as AI workloads expand.

What You'll Do:

Responsible for designing, building and maintaining Kong’s AI Gateway runtime and its underlying data plane stack.
Architecture, design, and implement new innovative features including proxying capabilities, semantic/intelligent routing, load balancing, guardrails and compression, and identity, that extend Kong’s AI Gateway offering.
Build and maintain security, performance, and compliance foundations, including token cost management, access control, and low-level optimizations for production AI workloads.
Engage with the open source community and extend Kong core to support the latest industry trends.
Fill the gaps between Kong AI Gateway and third-party AI/ML providers, deployment platforms, and tooling.
And any additional tasks required by the manager.

What You'll Bring:

8+ years of programming in server-side applications and components.
Experience designing, prototyping, building and debugging applications that are highly scalable, distributed, reliable and resilient.
Solid hands-on low-level technical expertise in Linux systems troubleshooting, and profiling.
Experience in distributed systems, Linux networking stack and computer systems programming, Kong works with APIs on both L7 and L4 transports and protocols, so this expertise and knowledge are required.
Comfortable working with a remotely distributed team.
Strong sense of ownership and excellent verbal and written communication skills.
Familiarity with AI LLM concepts and applications development.

Bonus Points:

Hands-on experience with NGINX/OpenResty/Kong/LuaJIT.
Hands-on experience with Envoy or Istio.
Hands-on experience with Rust.
Hands-on experience leveraging AI agents to deliver intricate software systems efficiently and with superior quality.

#LI-CL1

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.

About Kong

Company Overview

One-liner: Kong provides a unified API and AI platform that connects, secures, and manages APIs, events, and AI agents for modern architectures.
Entity Type: Private – Series E, post‑money valuation $2B (2023)
Headquarters: San Francisco, California, United States
Founded: 2017 (company formalized; roots as Mashape go back to 2009)
Founders: Augusto “Aghi” Marietti (CEO) and Marco Palladino (CTO)

Core Business

Primary industry: API management, AI connectivity, cloud infrastructure
Target customers: B2B – enterprises, platform engineering teams, developers, and product managers building API‑driven or AI‑agent applications
Mission / Purpose: To be the AI connectivity company – enabling organizations to connect, govern, and monetize APIs, events, and AI workloads at scale.

Products & Services

Kong Konnect: Managed, unified API and AI platform covering the full lifecycle – design, test, publish, govern, monetize – across any cloud or environment. SaaS.
Kong Gateway: Open‑source (and enterprise) API gateway, the world’s most adopted, used for traffic management, security, and observability. Open‑source hybrid.
Kong AI Gateway: Extension for managing and securing AI traffic – token consumption, cost control, and agent governance. SaaS / add‑on.
Kong Mesh: Enterprise service mesh for Kubernetes and VMs (based on Kuma, donated to CNCF). Infrastructure.
Insomnia: API design and testing tool (acquired and integrated into the Kong ecosystem). Desktop / CLI.
OpenMeter: Usage‑based billing, entitlements, and invoicing for APIs, events, and AI (acquired 2025). SaaS.

Market Standing

Valuation / Market Cap: $2 billion (as of late 2023 Series E round) – not publicly traded.
Key Metric: Surpassed $100M ARR in late 2023; processes +1 trillion API/AI requests per day; 600+ employees in 25+ countries (LinkedIn reports 738 employees with +23.5% YoY growth).
Total Funding: $344.1M across 6 rounds (including Series D $100M at $1.4B, and Series E $175M led by new investors).
Notable Investors / Partners: Include large institutional investors; partners include cloud providers and enterprises such as United Airlines (cited as customer). Open‑source community with 182K+ community users.

Competitive Advantages

Most adopted open‑source API gateway – strong developer mindshare and large community.
Unified platform covering the entire API lifecycle plus AI agent management, reducing fragmentation for enterprises.
High‑performance, low‑latency – proven at hyper‑volume (+1T requests/day), 99.99% availability SLA.
Strategic acquisitions (Kuma, Insomnia, OpenMeter) that plug gaps in service mesh, developer tooling, and usage‑based billing.
Strong enterprise DNA – trusted by global brands for mission‑critical applications.

Strategic Focus

AI connectivity – building the layer to manage LLM traffic, agent security, token cost, and real‑time data streams.
Monetization – enabling customers to monetize APIs and AI consumption (chargeback, entitlements, pricing).
Developer productivity – accelerating onboarding and reducing costs (claims 15% faster development, 57% operational cost reduction).
Global scale – growing remote workforce and entering new geographic markets (e.g., Italy, ANZ roles posted).

Sources

Kong at a glance

Job description

#LI-CL1

Why work at Kong

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