Staff Technical Support Engineer at Kong (California, United States)

Kong· California, United States·1d ago

Role details

Work type

Remote

Employment

Full-Time

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: Join Kong's fast-paced Technical Support Engineering (TSE) team to resolve complex, mission-critical issues across production and pre-production environments. In this role, engineer-to-engineer collaboration drives success as you champion the customer's voice, directly influencing our product and engineering roadmaps. Expect high-impact work, genuine ownership, and the opportunity to build lasting relationships with customers and partners while mastering cutting-edge technologies.

What You'll Do:

Working with top developers from around the world; helping to implement Kong Products and Technologies, including our API Gateway and AI Gateway solutions
Leading the investigation of complex technical puzzles and working collaboratively to understand and resolve customer issues via live troubleshooting calls and emails in an enterprise environment
Creating knowledge articles to compliment our documentation and enable customers to better understand product use cases
Work closely with engineering and product by providing real-time feedback about product performance and customer needs
Collaborate closely with other customer-facing teams, including Education, Technical Account Managers, CSMs, and PS for customer issues
Participate in bringing innovation within the support team, the company, and our customers by looking for better ways to do the work we do, improve the tools we use, and improve the way we raise the bar on the service we deliver to our Global 5000 customers
Provide technical mentorship to other team members and participate in any ad hoc projects

What You’ll Bring:

Strong foundation in API management, HTTP protocols, and modern application architectures
Experience implementing secure authentication and authorization flows (e.g., OpenID Connect, OAuth)
Expertise with cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, GCP) and container orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes, Serverless)
Operational knowledge of Git/GitHub versioning, change control, and CI/CD workflows
Ability to utilize AI tools (Claude, Gemini, etc.) to streamline technical workflows and diagnostics
5+ years in a high-touch, customer-facing technical role (e.g., Support Engineering, Solutions Architecture, or Technical Account Management)

#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.

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-MP1

Why work at Kong

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