Job Details

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.

Location: West Coast Based

Travel: Remote with 10-25% travel expectations

For this role, we are looking for a US Citizen who can support Government/Public Sector Customers

About the role:

Join the global API and AI governance leader in the Artificial Intelligence era!

API traffic now outnumbers human traffic online, and a large part of that is driven by the Kong platform, the world's most popular API gateway. We are seeking a Staff Solutions Architect to join the growing Professional Services team at Kong, maker of the world's most popular API gateway. As a Staff Solutions Architect, you will be responsible for leading and guiding our customers through their technical and innovation journey with Kong, ensuring the utmost value from our products. You'll serve as a technical guru and advisor to our enterprise customers, consulting with their teams through the architecture, implementation, and deployment of Kong technology and setting them up for long-term success. The work you do is instrumental in driving adoption, overall satisfaction, and customer retention. You will work with the world's top companies in technology, banking/financial services, retail, industrial, transportation and a whole host of other sectors.

In this role, you will interface and collaborate with a variety of peers and partners as well as everyone in the customer environment from developers to executives. You will be the champion of driving successful customer engagements. Internally, you will collaborate closely with Kong's product, engineering, customer success, and customer reliability engineering teams. Working at Kong is a unique opportunity to make a massive impact on Fortune 50/500 customers and modernize their mission critical systems into the AI era.

What's in it for you? Impact, Growth and Opportunity.

The impact of high growth, impact on accelerated innovation using AI-enabled connectivity, and impact on customers.

Growth of your career and equity rewards in addition to a strong cash compensation, great benefits, and contribute to an outstanding collaborative culture of COURAGE.

Opportunity to work on cutting edge technology and develop your career at Kong - make the investment in future-proofing your skills as Kong powers AI connectivity for the world. We are a culture that promotes personal growth and offers flexible career pathways.

What You'll Do:

• Help customers with API and AI governance lifecycle journeys. Engagements involve remote delivery, leading virtual and in-person technical workshops for customer architects, developers, security and operations teams. You will be responsible for designing and creating an end to end solution architecture, addressing technical challenges, and providing hands-on technical implementation across the Kong platform.
• Engage with customers on projects, guiding them through the installation and implementation of Kong solutions in their chosen environment - hyperscalers, hybrid or on-prem.
• Lead customer discussions, driving outcome-based professional services and provide technical thought leadership across the customer adoption journey.
• Collaborate internally with product engineering, customer success, and account teams to ensure our customers are getting the most value out of their Kong investment.
• Have the opportunity to build re-usable tools, author technical documentation, white papers, reference architecture, blogs, and design patterns based on customer experiences.

What You'll Bring:

Experience:

• 8+ years in customer-facing technical roles (professional services/product support).
• Hands-on implementation of API gateways/integrations.
• Understanding of the API governance lifecycle.
• Experience building infrastructure with VMs or Kubernetes containers.
• Knowledge of DevOps, Security, and Networking fundamentals.
• Proficiency in Linux, Cloud, and Development tooling.
• Kubernetes proficiency.
• Experience with major cloud providers (GCP, AWS, Azure).
• Application development experience (preferred).
• Prior experience in Open Source, API Management, Middleware, or SaaS software companies.
• Software development in Java, Python, or Lua.

Required Personal Attributes:

• Strong desire and proven ability to solve hard technical problems with minimal supervision.
• Excellent communication: concisely explain complex technical solutions.
• Passion for technology.
• Team-oriented and collaborative.
• Self-aware and strong communication skills
• Exceptional organizational and change management skills; ability to manage competing demands.

• Proven team player/builder; thrives in a fast-growing, dynamic, hands-on environment.
• Ability to travel to customer and Kong locations as needed

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 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.