Staff Solutions Engineer

Overview

Step into a pivotal role at the forefront of the API and AI integration revolution. As a Staff Solutions Engineer at Kong, you will act as a trusted expert guiding innovative enterprises in designing secure, scalable API ecosystems, while steering their transition into the agentic AI era. This position focuses on connecting API management with AI-driven connectivity solutions.

Key Responsibilities

• Partner with sales teams to clarify the benefits of Kong's API and AI connectivity offerings to customers.
• Engage in discovery sessions to assess customer needs and align them with Kong’s solutions from initial assessments to production deployment.
• Manage proof-of-concept projects, overseeing technical validation and harmonizing stakeholder interests throughout the evaluation.
• Maintain high levels of customer satisfaction across your portfolio of accounts.
• Collaborate closely with support, product, and engineering teams to represent customer perspectives and requirements.
• Produce technical documentation supporting DevOps, implementations, and service engagements.
• Lead and assist in API management and AI governance assessments, including scoping use cases, managing large language model (LLM) traffic, and ensuring compliance with governance protocols.
• Demonstrate Kong’s capabilities in API and AI governance, including Model Context Protocol (MCP) governance, semantic caching, prompt guardrails, and detection of shadow AI activities.
• Conduct Technical Feasibility Workshops focused on API and AI architectures to validate Kong’s applicability for modern and agentic solutions.
• Craft and own technical strategies for complex enterprise deals involving multiple stakeholders, guiding the process from start to close.
• Mentor and develop junior solutions engineers in technical expertise, discovery techniques, and deal strategy formulation.
• Contribute to industry thought leadership by authoring technical content, hosting webinars, and speaking at major conferences such as AWS re:Invent, Google Next, and API & AI summits.
• Provide actionable customer and market feedback to influence the product roadmap.
• Fulfill additional responsibilities as directed by management.

Qualifications

• At least 7 years demonstrated experience in software or solutions engineering within SaaS, open source, or enterprise software firms.
• Proficient in managing complex enterprise sales involving numerous technical and executive stakeholders.
• Proven ability to mentor and coach peers or technical team members.
• Hands-on expertise with containerization and orchestration technologies like Docker and Kubernetes, and cloud-native environments.
• Familiarity with API technologies including REST and GraphQL, continuous integration/deployment pipelines, and security protocols such as OAuth2, OIDC, and mutual TLS.
• Practical use of AI-assisted development tools like Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or OpenAI Codex.
• Understanding of AI and large language model architectures, covering model routing, rate controlling, semantic caching, and prompt governance mechanisms.
• Knowledge of Model Context Protocol (MCP) and agentic AI design patterns.
• In-depth awareness of cloud computing advancements and open source business ecosystems.
• Excellent communication and listening skills, capable of facilitating discussions across technical teams and executive levels.
• Strong motivation to work in a dynamic, high-impact environment at the cutting edge of API and AI connectivity.

About Kong

Kong Inc. is a forefront developer in the API and AI connectivity sector, pioneering the infrastructure that enables the agentic era. Trusted by global enterprises and startups alike, the company’s unified platform, Kong Konnect, allows organizations to securely and effectively manage, accelerate, govern, and monetize intelligence transfer across APIs and AI models.