{"id":70836,"url":"https://alion.io/job/kong-inc-senior-engineering-manager-test-function","title":"Senior Engineering Manager - Test Function","company":{"id":4941,"name":"Kong","domain":"konghq.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/kong","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":91,"open_postings":11,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.364,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":54,"computed_at":"2026-10-16T05:45:00Z"}},"role":"Leadership","role_family":"Leadership","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Milan, Italy"],"countries":["IT"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":104635,"max":129255,"currency":"EUR","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":144853},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":10,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"API Gateway","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"Docker","optional":false},{"name":"GitHub Actions","optional":false},{"name":"Kong","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":false},{"name":"Lua","optional":false},{"name":"Model Context Protocol","optional":false},{"name":"Rust","optional":false},{"name":"Self-Healing","optional":false},{"name":"Shift-Left","optional":false},{"name":"Shift-Left Security","optional":false},{"name":"Synthetic Data","optional":false},{"name":"Tool Use","optional":false},{"name":"Chaos Engineering","optional":true},{"name":"Nginx","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-07T16:07:38Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-08-07","last_verified_at":"2026-10-16T18:30:21Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":70,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":70},"description":"Are you ready to unlock intelligence?\nIf 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.\nAbout the Role:\nAs the Senior Engineering Manager, you will serve as the global leader for Quality Engineering across Kong’s flagship runtime platforms (AI Gateway, API Gateway, Event Gateway and Mesh).\nThis is a high-visibility, transformative leadership role. Beyond overseeing our distributed global SDET organization, you will be the primary architect of Kong’s next-generation AI-driven testing strategy. You will spearhead the transformation of our quality engineering function from traditional automation to an intelligent, agentic, self-healing test substrate, using LLMs and automated prompt/agent loops to test the very infrastructure powering the AI era.\nWhat You’ll Do:\nGlobal Team Leadership & Operations: Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing, geographically distributed team of Software Development Engineers in Test (SDETs) across North America, Europe, and Asia.\n\nArchitect the AI Testing Strategy: Define and execute the roadmap for integrating AI, LLMs, and autonomous test agents directly into our testing lifecycle. Implement generative AI capabilities for automated test case generation, smart failure triage, self-healing test scripts, and dynamic edge-case synthesis.\n\nOwn Runtimes Quality Strategy: Establish testing strategies for low-latency, high-throughput C/Lua/Rust data planes.\n\nModernize Frameworks & CI/CD Pipelines: Oversee the architectural evolution of our end-to-end, performance, regression, and chaos-testing automation harnesses embedded within modern CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, Docker, K8s).\n\nShift-Left Quality & Governance: Drive quality ownership upstream. Partner closely with Software Engineering and Product Management to embed rigorous testability standards into initial architectural designs.\n\nDefine Enterprise-Grade Metrics: Establish and monitor clear QE health indicators (e.g., CI signal reliability, automation coverage, defect density, time-to-triage, and release stability).\n\nWhat You’ll Bring:\n10+ Years in Software Engineering / SDET: Proven track record building and scaling enterprise software test automation systems.\n\n4+ Years in Engineering Management: Direct experience leading distributed or global software engineering/SDET teams.\n\nHands-on AI Integration Vision: Proven experience applying LLMs, Generative AI, or autonomous agent frameworks (e.g., Model Context Protocol, agentic tool-calling, synthetic data generation) to software quality or developer workflows.\n\nOperational Excellence: Demonstrated ability to manage follow-the-sun operational cadence, vendor partnerships, and cross-timezone execution seamlessly.\n\nBonus Points:\nDirect experience testing high-performance networking data planes, proxies, or API Gateways (e.g., Kong, NGINX, Envoy).\n\nBackground in performance, chaos engineering (e.g., Gremlin, Litmus), and load testing high-availability SaaS platforms.\n\nActive involvement or contributions to open-source quality frameworks or AI development tooling.\n\nAbout Kong:\nKong 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.","description_format":"text","description_chars":3631,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":10,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"Italy","iso":"IT","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Integration & API Management","Developer Tools"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-08-07T16:07:38Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":30,"band":"fade","label":"Fading","p_open":1,"p_active":0.681,"p_room":0.44,"age_days":69,"expected_fill_days":54,"reasons":["conf:0","velocity","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-16T05:45:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":144853,"is_top_pay":false},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/kong-inc-senior-engineering-manager-test-function","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/kong-inc-senior-engineering-manager-test-function.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-16T19:29:50Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":5116,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-17T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":4941},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=4941"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fkong-inc-senior-engineering-manager-test-function"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fkong-inc-senior-engineering-manager-test-function"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fkong-inc-senior-engineering-manager-test-function"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/kong-inc-senior-engineering-manager-test-function\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fkong-inc-senior-engineering-manager-test-function"}]}