---
title: 'Staff Product Manager, AI Management at Kong'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-product-manager-ai-management-kong-san-francisco-bd3txyv6f7nk'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-16'
---

# Staff Product Manager, AI Management at Kong

- **Company:** [Kong](https://feeny.ai/companies/kong)
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-10-09
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-16
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/kong/72375328-ae8e-4090-9fd3-3580878751e2

## 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.

The Mission At Kong, we are building the future of AI connectivity, empowering developers to connect, secure, govern, and scale their AI applications with speed and intelligence. As a Staff Product Manager for AI Management, you will own the product direction for our fastest-growing agentic AI portfolio—including our flagship AI Gateway—serving as a critical strategic lever in the Agentic Era. You will bridge high-impact technical innovation with enterprise runtime governance, context management, and developer platform experience to turn APIs and AI connectivity into an organizational innovation factory.

What You’ll Do:

- Architect and execute the product vision and roadmap for AI Management modules, driving core capabilities around agentic harnesses, LLM routing, policies, context, guardrails, and evaluation.
- Lead cross-departmental strategy as a multiplier across engineering, design, product marketing, and executive leadership to align shared roadmaps without operational friction.
- Own the full lifecycle of your product modules by writing precise specs, prioritizing backlogs, and balancing new feature delivery against technical debt and platform dependencies.
- Drive cross-product work connecting AI Management to Kong’s core platform infrastructure, enabling seamless data plane and control plane integration.
- Speed up the clock on high-velocity delivery cadences in close partnership with engineering leads to scope work, navigate trade-offs, and accelerate time to market.
- Support regional field activities, customer-facing technical engagements, and sales enablement to validate product-market fit and ensure developer delight.

What You’ll Bring:

- 7-10 years of technical product management experience owning and shipping technical products in developer tools, API platforms, or AI infrastructure.
- Demonstrated ability to translate complex technical challenges—such as Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, request routing, data plane architectures, and transport trade-offs—into actionable product requirements.
- Proven track record driving execution and managing dependencies across globally distributed R&D teams.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills to articulate technical strategy across multiple functions and seniority levels.
- Deep project management instincts to track work, surface blockers early, and keep cross-functional roadmaps on schedule.

The Kong DNA:

- Ownership: You act as a driver, not a passenger, holding yourself accountable for product outcomes, runtime performance, and customer success.
- Urgency: You model speed and efficiency in everything you do, navigating the fast-paced pre-IPO landscape with grit and focus.
- Collaboration: You lead like an API by working cross-functionally, breaking down silos, and building alignment across global teams.

Bonus Points:

- Direct experience with agentic AI development, including AI agents, AI gateways, LLM routing, AI observability, prompt management, guardrails, MCP servers, and A2A communications.
- Familiarity with enterprise platform engineering, Kubernetes, cloud-native architectures, control planes, and data planes.

## #LI-MP1

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).

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

## Why Work Here
- **Remote‑first culture** – 600+ employees across 25+ countries; strong emphasis on global collaboration.
- **Perks & benefits** (from [careers page](https://konghq.com/company/careers)):
  - 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.

## Sources
1. [konghq.com](https://konghq.com/)
2. [konghq.com/company/careers](https://konghq.com/company/careers)
3. [konghq.com/company/about-us](https://konghq.com/company/about-us)
4. [linkedin.com/company/konghq](https://www.linkedin.com/company/konghq)
5. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/kong](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/kong)

## Other roles at Kong

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- [Staff Customer Success Manager, UK](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-customer-success-manager-uk-kong-england-691bvwcphr5p) — England, United Kingdom
- [Field Marketing Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/field-marketing-manager-kong-delhi-h87z1spmms2m) — Delhi, India
- [Director, Performance Marketing](https://feeny.ai/job/director-performance-marketing-kong-san-francisco-fms6npjwrsg4) — San Francisco, CA
- [Senior PLG Digital Growth Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-plg-digital-growth-manager-kong-san-francisco-zjsb9t54bfxd) — San Francisco, CA
- [Account Development Representative (Chicago, IL) (Hybrid)](https://feeny.ai/job/account-development-representative-chicago-il-hybrid-kong-illinois-ttpjmh5kh58z) — Illinois, United States
- [Senior Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-kong-bengaluru-8qy1dbn4hz9a) — Bengaluru, India
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