Software Engineer - API Operations

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:

Thousands of organizations have adopted the Kong API Gateway, the most popular open-source API gateway. Since Kong is used by platform and SRE teams, it comes with tight integration with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tooling like Terraform, Pulumi, and Kubernetes. Such integrations and tooling are prerequisites for starting and operating Kong Gateway and the larger API ecosystem surrounding it. “API Operations” (API-Ops for short) team builds developer-first experiences and tools that are run more than a few million times every day of the year.

Some of the products that this team works on:

• decK: Declarative configuration management tool for Kong Gateway
• Terraform-provider: Terraform provider for Kong Konnect - Kong’s SaaS product
• SDK for Go: Go SDK for Kong Konnect
• SDK for TS: TypeScript SDK for Kong Konnect
• SDKs in other languages and tooling to generate SDKs from APIs
• API specification and tooling for all products of Kong
• Build a CLI-first experience for Kong Konnect

Some problems that you will solve when you come on board:

• Create CLI-first experiences and products that help our users (who are always engineers themselves).
• Make a CLI tool work for humans as well as automation (inside Github Actions, Jenkins, etc.)
• Ship API changes to multiple tools at the same time without manual toil
• Make and consistently raise the bar for world-class APIs for a company that helps the world build and run APIs




We love to work together, so this opportunity is a hybrid one. What does that mean?We come to the office three days a week and work from home the other two days. Life happens, and we are cool if you need to work remotely sometime.

You can find a few more details on what kind of background we are looking for:

• Communication skills. We care a lot about how you interact with others, so we've included this at the top of this list.
• Prior operations (DevOps/SRE) experience. We are building products for other operations engineers, so if you have been an operations engineer (of any sort), that helps you write code much more effectively.
• Experience building Terraform providers, Pulumi providers, and Kubernetes Operators.
• Good understanding of CI pipelines and engineering automation workflows. Most of our tools run in CI pipelines worldwide.
• Experience building APIs, standardizing APIs in large organizations, and creating API workflows. At the very least, you know what OpenAPI specifications are and the problem they solve.
• We program in Go. Prior experience in a similar language is good, but we don’t care if you have used Go specifically before as long as you can pick it up. 
• 5+ years working in a team to develop, deliver, and maintain complex software solutions.
• Bachelors or Masters degree in Computer Science.
• And any additional tasks necessary to make the team and the product successful. This could include participating in team meetings, contributing to product roadmap discussions, and providing technical guidance to team members.

Bonus Points:

• You have built Command Line Interfaces (CLIs) or other developer-first experiences.
• Deep experience with OpenAPI specification. You know OpenAPI specifications and all the tricky bits inside it.
• You have worked with Kong Gateway before. 
• Experience with Open-Source software development.

About Kong: 

Kong is THE cloud native API platform with the fastest, most adopted API gateway in the world (over 300m downloads!). As the innovation leader of cloud API technologies, Kong 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 to market.

83% of web traffic today is API calls! APIs are the connective tissue of the cloud and the underlying technology that allows software to talk and interact with one another. Therefore, we believe that APIs act as the nervous system of the cloud. Our audacious mission is to build the nervous system that will safely and reliably connect all of humankind!  

For more information about Kong, please visit konghq.com or follow @thekonginc on Twitter.

We are an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or veteran status.

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