Typical software engineer pay at startups: $221K median, middle half $188K–$256K (2,406 posted ranges).
Typical engineering pay at Kong: $190K–$245K — median of 11 listed ranges.
Across all startups we track: $170K–$242K for engineering roles (8,046 listed ranges).
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 Control Plane team architects the central nervous system of Kong's entire ecosystem. We build the high-performance, resilient, and scalable services that enable our users to configure and manage billions of API calls with confidence. This role is at the heart of delivering a world-class developer experience, ensuring our platform is not just powerful, but also intuitive and reliable at enterprise scale.
Design and implement core features for the Kong Gateway Control Plane, primarily using Golang.
Own the full lifecycle of services, from architectural design and implementation to deployment and operational excellence.
Lead technical discussions and architectural decisions to prevent technical debt and ensure our commitment to 99.99% uptime.
Influence the technical roadmap for our cloud-native components, advocating for best practices in a distributed systems environment.
Mentor other engineers through thoughtful code reviews and design sessions, fostering a culture of high-quality code and developer delight.
Collaborate with product managers and other engineering teams to architect and deliver impactful solutions for our global user base.
Resolve complex bugs and performance bottlenecks in our core networking and configuration management components.
Significant professional experience writing and deploying production services in Golang.
Deep understanding of distributed systems, microservices architecture, and API design principles.
Hands-on experience with Kubernetes (K8s) and the cloud-native ecosystem.
Proficiency with relational databases, such as PostgreSQL.
Familiarity with modern CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure-as-code practices.
Ownership: A proactive, self-starting mindset with a bias for action and a sense of responsibility for the end-to-end user experience.
Urgency: The ability to thrive in a fast-paced, pre-IPO environment, delivering high-impact work on ambitious timelines without sacrificing quality.
Collaboration: Excellent communication skills and a team-first attitude, adept at working across functions to achieve common goals.
Experience with API gateways, service mesh (like Kuma), or related networking technologies.
Active contributions to open-source projects.
Knowledge of Lua or NGINX internals.
Experience building and managing large-scale SaaS platforms.
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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.
From Kong's careers page. First seen Oct 25, 2026, last verified Oct 26, 2026.
Open roles: 93, up 4 (+4%) over the last 8 days.