Engineering Manager (API Ops and UI)

Are you ready to power the World's connections?

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

Kong’s API Management suite includes several products such as the Kong Enterprise Gateway, the Kong AI Gateway and the Konnect SaaS platform. These help organisations across industries manage and operate their APIs in secure fashion, with high throughput and reliability.

We are looking for an engineering leader who will manage the teams working on API ops and the UI needs of our product portfolio.

• The API Ops team owns the deck Open Source command line interface (CLI) to all Kong runtimes as well as Terraform support for the Kong Gateway. These are the most widely used tools to operate Kong’s products in production.

• The UI team builds the core features in Kong’s SaaS platform.

This opportunity requires you to work from our office in Bangalore, India in a hybrid manner with three days in the office and two days working from home. As a leader, we expect you to efficiently maximize your time with the team and deliver outcomes.

• Build and lead high-performing engineering teams that consistently deliver results.

• Attract, mentor, and retain top engineering talent, fostering growth and development across Kong's engineering organisation.

• Own the end-to-end technical success of your engineering teams, ensuring industry-leading security, quality, performance, and reliability.

• Architect and operate software systems to maintain 99.99% SLA or higher reliability.

• Play a pivotal role in shaping the technical direction for the API Ops and UI teams by driving innovation.

• Collaborate closely with product leadership to define and refine strategy, roadmap, and objectives for managed gateways, ensuring alignment between engineering efforts and business goals.

• Oversee multiple agile workstreams simultaneously to ensure the timely execution of projects and initiatives.

• Interface directly with customers and field teams to understand use cases, pain points, and opportunities for innovation; incorporate this feedback into product improvements.

• Own key objectives that directly impact business outcomes, contributing to enhanced revenue growth for Kong.

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or a related field.

• 4+ years of experience in engineering management, building and leading high-performing teams.

• 5+ years of experience in SaaS development, specifically operating software with 99.99% reliability or higher.

• Strong expertise in networking concepts, particularly OSI Layer 4 (Transport) and Layer 7 (Application) protocols, and public cloud network architectures.

• Proven track record of successfully bringing new SaaS offerings to market.

• Hands-on experience designing, prototyping, building, debugging and operating microservices architectures and distributed systems.

• Expertise in monitoring and observability practices to ensure high availability, resilience, and performance of services.

• Familiarity with public cloud platforms such as AWS, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), or Microsoft Azure.

• Exceptional verbal and written communication skills to effectively collaborate across teams.

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About Kong:

Kong Inc., a leading developer of cloud API technologies, 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 time to market. For more information about Kong, please visit www.konghq.com or follow us on X @thekonginc.