Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Kong Inc. is a leading developer of API and AI connectivity technologies, building the infrastructure that powers the agentic era. As a Senior Software Engineering Manager for Managed Gateways SREs, you will lead the reliability and operational excellence of Kong's managed services, directly contributing to critical implementations and mentoring a high-performing team.
Responsibilities
- Build Kong's Managed Gateways SRE team in Seattle, Washington from the ground up - hiring, setting the bar, and staying hands-on in enterprise implementations as the team ramps
- Act as a direct contributor to critical implementations and reliability work in the early stages, with outcomes that materially move the needle on Managed Gateways' growth and business performance
- Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing team of Site Reliability Engineers dedicated to Kong's Managed Gateway offerings, in direct support of our critical enterprise customer base across the Americas and Europe
- Architect and implement robust, scalable, and fault-tolerant cloud-native systems using technologies like Kubernetes, Golang, and major cloud providers
- Own the end-to-end operational lifecycle, from proactive monitoring and alerting to incident response and blameless post-mortems, ensuring continuous service improvement
- Drive developer delight and operational efficiency through automation, self-service tooling, and streamlined workflows for deploying and managing API gateways, while proactively preventing technical debt and reducing operational toil
- Define, track, and report on key SLOs and SLIs, and advocate for architectural best practices that keep Managed Gateways performant and resilient as it scales
- Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, engineering, and support teams to influence roadmap decisions and ensure operational readiness for new features
Skills
- Proven experience leading and managing Site Reliability Engineering or DevOps teams in a fast-paced, high-growth environment
- Deep expertise in designing, deploying, and operating highly available distributed systems on cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP)
- Extensive hands-on experience with Kubernetes (k8s) and container orchestration in production environments
- Proficiency in Golang or similar modern programming languages for infrastructure automation and service development
- Strong understanding of observability principles and experience with tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, or similar
- Demonstrated ability to manage critical incidents, perform root cause analysis, and implement effective preventative measures
- Familiarity with API gateway technologies, service mesh, or network proxies is a significant plus
- Ownership: You take full responsibility for the reliability and performance of systems, driving initiatives from conception to completion
- Urgency: You thrive in dynamic environments, prioritizing critical issues and delivering impactful solutions with speed and precision
- Collaboration: You build strong relationships, foster open communication, and work effectively across global teams to achieve shared goals
- Experience with open-source contributions or active participation in SRE/cloud-native communities
- Certifications in cloud platforms (e.g., AWS Certified DevOps Engineer) or Kubernetes (e.g., CKA, CKAD)
- Background in companies focused on developer tools, infrastructure software, or API management
Company Overview
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