Technical Certification Developer
Kong Inc.
Are you ready to unlock intelligence?
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:
We are looking for a precision-oriented Technical Certification Developer to drive the creation and evolution of high-stakes assessment programs for Kong's platform. This role is central to validating deep professional expertise by merging complex technical architectures with rigorous psychometric standards, ensuring our credentials maintain maximum credibility and real-world relevance.
What You'll do:
Exam architecture & lifecycle management: Lead end-to-end development initiatives, from defining job task analysis (JTA) outputs to establishing weighted blueprint structures and item specifications.
Item development & review: Collaborate with instructional designers and subject matter experts to craft and iterate on a bank of high-quality, scenario-based exam items-including multiple choice and performance-based formats-aligned with specific learning objectives.
Quality assurance: Facilitate technical review workshops with subject matter experts to calibrate on accuracy, clarity, and difficulty relevance.
Security & integrity: Enforce exam security best practices, including rigorous item bank management, version control, and response protocols for content exposure incidents.
Lab & content development: Collaborate with instructional designers and lab engineers on the production of hands-on practice labs and official study guides that map directly to high-stakes assessment domains.
Program operations
Support the appeals process by reviewing flagged items and providing documented technical rationale for scoring decisions
Document content development processes, style guides, and item writing standards for the program
What You'll Bring:
Required
3+ years of hands-on experience with API development, API gateway configuration, or API platform engineering
Strong Kubernetes knowledge
Demonstrated experience writing technical documentation, assessments, or instructional content at a professional level
Strong understanding of the full API lifecycle: design, specification (OpenAPI/AsyncAPI), publishing, versioning, security (OAuth 2.0, API keys, mTLS), monitoring, and deprecation
Ability to translate complex technical concepts into clear, scenario-based assessment items that measure applied competency rather than recall
Meticulous attention to detail, with the ability to identify ambiguous, flawed, or biased exam questions
Comfortable working in a structured, process-driven environment with documented review cycles and governance checkpoints
Preferred
Familiarity with psychometric principles: item difficulty, discrimination indices, content validity, and standard-setting methods (Angoff, bookmark)
Experience with exam-authoring or item-banking platforms (e.g., FastTest, Questionmark, Caveon, Trueability)
Prior involvement in developing or contributing to a formal certification or accreditation program
Hands-on experience with one or more API lifecycle management platforms (e.g., Kong, Apigee, MuleSoft, AWS API Gateway, Azure API Management)
Exposure to instructional design frameworks (e.g., Bloom's Taxonomy, Kirkpatrick Model, ADDIE)
Relevant industry certification (e.g., AWS Certified Developer, Google Cloud Professional, CKAD, or equivalent)
What success looks like in year one:
Exam blueprint finalized and approved by the certification advisory board
Initial item bank of 200+ validated items across all blueprint domains, ready for pilot
Pilot exam completed, cut score established, and live exam launched
Official study guide published and aligned to blueprint
First exam refresh cycle initiated based on item analysis data
About Kong:
Kong Inc., a leading developer of API and AI connectivity technologies, is building the infrastructure that powers the agentic era. Trusted by the Fortune 500 and startups alike, Kong's unified API and AI platform, Kong Konnect, enables organizations to secure, manage, accelerate, govern, and monetize the flow of intelligence across APIs and AI models. For more information, visit www.konghq.com.