{"id":16429,"url":"https://alion.io/job/kong-software-engineer-ai-gateway","title":"Software Engineer AI Gateway","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":89,"open_postings":11,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.455,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":50,"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"middle","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":63750,"max":78750,"currency":"EUR","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":88253},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":3,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Go","optional":false},{"name":"Kong","optional":false},{"name":"Kong AI Gateway","optional":false},{"name":"Linux","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"Model Context Protocol","optional":false},{"name":"Rust","optional":false},{"name":"Envoy","optional":true},{"name":"Istio","optional":true},{"name":"Lua","optional":true},{"name":"LuaJIT","optional":true},{"name":"Nginx","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-06-17T08:12:36Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-06-17","last_verified_at":"2026-10-17T15:49:13Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":122,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":122},"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:\nYou will join the engineering team that builds the Kong AI gateway, empowering companies and developers around the world to govern every step of their AI & LLM based innovation.\nAs a Software Engineer in the AI Gateway Team, you will be working on core features such as multi-LLM routing and balancing, semantic caching and routing, MCP, and more.\nWhat You'll Do:\nResponsible for building and maintaining API management software for AI and LLMs and its underlying stack.\n\nImplement new innovative features including proxying capabilities, load balancing, databases support that extend Kong AI Gateway’s offering.\n\nBugs troubleshooting, performance tuning and low-level optimizations.\n\nFill the gaps between Kong and third-party deployment platforms and tooling.\n\nAny additional tasks required by manager.\n\nWhat You'll Bring:\n3+ years of programming in server-side applications and components.\n\nHands on experience with either Golang or Rust\n\nExperience building and debugging applications that are highly scalable, distributed, reliable and resilient.\n\nSolid hands-on low-level technical expertise in Linux systems troubleshooting, and profiling.\n\nExperience in distributed systems, Linux networking stack and computer systems programming, Kong works with APIs on both L7 and L4 transports and protocols, so this expertise and knowledge are required.\n\nComfortable working with a remotely distributed team.\n\nStrong sense of ownership and excellent verbal and written communication skills -- engineers at Kong write the documentation for their products\n\nFamiliarity with AI LLM concepts and applications development\n\nBonus Points:\nHands on experience with NGINX/OpenResty/Kong/LuaJIT.\n\nHands on experience with Envoy or Istio.\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. 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