Kong Staff Solutions Engineer at Kong acting as a trusted technical advisor for enterprise customers on API and AI connectivity platforms. Supports sales, conducts discovery, leads POCs, and mentors junior engineers.
Responsibilities
Are you ready to sit at the epicenter of the API and AI connectivity revolution? As a Staff Solutions Engineer at Kong, you won’t just be selling a platform — you’ll be a trusted technical advisor helping the world’s most innovative enterprises architect secure, scalable API ecosystems while navigating the transition into the agentic AI era. Kong sits at the intersection of API management and AI connectivity, and you’ll be the person who makes that story real for customers.
Support field sales in helping customers understand the value of the Kong API and AI connectivity platform.
Conduct discovery conversations to understand customer requirements and map them to Kong solutions, from initial product reviews through to production.
Support POCs throughout the entire evaluation process, owning technical validation and stakeholder alignment.
Ensure customer satisfaction across your assigned set of accounts.
Collaborate with support, product, and engineering teams to advocate for customer needs.
Create technical documentation for DevOps, implementations, and services engagements.
Lead and support API Management and AI Goverance evaluations, including scoping API/AI use cases, LLM traffic management, and governance requirements.
Deliver demonstrations of Kong’s API & AI governance and agentic connectivity capabilities, including Model Context Protocol (MCP) governance, semantic caching, prompt guardrails, and shadow AI detection.
Run API & AI-focused Technical Feasibility Workshops (TFWs) to validate Kong’s fit for modern and/or AI/agentic architectures.
Own the technical strategy for complex, multi-stakeholder enterprise deals from qualification through close.
Mentor and coach junior SEs on technical skills, discovery methods, and deal strategy.
Qualification
Proven track record owning complexExperience with DockerExperience with REST and GraphQL APIs
Required
7+ years of software engineering and/or solutions engineering experience at a SaaS, open source, or enterprise software company
Proven track record owning complex, enterprise-level deals with multiple stakeholders
Experience mentoring or coaching other SEs or technical team members
Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud-native platforms
Experience with REST and GraphQL APIs, CI/CD pipelines, and API security patterns (OAuth2)
