About this role.
Kong is seeking a Site Reliability Engineer to operate and scale its global, multi-region Konnect SaaS platform. The role focuses on Kubernetes infrastructure, infrastructure-as-code, GitOps delivery, cloud networking, distributed data systems, and production observability. The engineer will help maintain reliability, performance, resilience, and security across AWS, GCP, and Azure environments. This hands-on position includes a global 24/7 on-call rotation, incident-response improvement, and close collaboration with engineering and security teams.
Role DNA
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Job Complexity
5/5Pace & Pressure
5/5Autonomy Level
4/5Communication Load
4/5Salary analysis
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Core skills
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Sample interview questions
I would begin by defining availability and recovery objectives, then use independent regional clusters with automated provisioning and consistent GitOps-based configuration. I would design traffic routing, health checks, data replication, failover procedures, and observability around defined SLOs, while regularly validating the design through disaster-recovery and resiliency tests.
I use reusable modules, environment-specific configuration, code review, plan validation, and controlled apply workflows to make infrastructure changes repeatable. I also add policy checks, remote state protections, drift detection, and rollback procedures so changes are auditable and less likely to introduce production risk.
I would first correlate latency with metrics, traces, logs, deployment events, and regional traffic patterns. I would investigate application saturation, pod and node resources, DNS, service mesh behavior, load balancers, network paths, database or cache latency, and cross-region dependencies before implementing and validating a targeted fix.
I would identify user-facing critical journeys and define SLIs such as availability, successful request rate, latency, and error rate. I would set SLOs based on business expectations and historical performance, use error budgets to guide operational decisions, and configure alerts that are actionable, symptom-based, and appropriately routed to avoid alert fatigue.
During an incident, I prioritize restoring customer impact through clear ownership, timely communication, mitigation, and evidence collection. Afterward, I facilitate a blameless postmortem that documents the timeline, contributing factors, detection gaps, corrective actions, owners, and due dates, then ensure improvements are tracked through completion.
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.
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:
As a Site Reliability Engineer, you’ll join the global Platform SRE team responsible for building, operating, and scaling Kong’s multi-region SaaS platform that powers the world’s API connectivity.
You’ll design, automate, and run production systems serving thousands of customers across AWS, GCP, and Azure. You’ll work on everything from multi-region Kubernetes clusters to service mesh and gateway architectures, ensuring the reliability, scalability, and security of Kong’s SaaS offerings.
This is a hands-on role ideal for engineers who thrive on running production SaaS systems at scale, automating operations, and continuously improving performance, resilience, and deployment pipelines.
What You’ll Do:
Operate and scale Kong’s global SaaS platform (Konnect), ensuring reliability, availability, and performance across regions and clouds.
Build, automate, and maintain Kubernetes-based infrastructure and deployment workflows using Terraform/Terragrunt, Helm, and ArgoCD.
Design, maintain, and optimize multi-region data and caching layers — including PostgreSQL, Redis, ClickHouse, and Druid — for high availability and low latency.
Operate and improve Kong Gateway and Kong Mesh environments supporting hybrid and distributed architectures.
Develop and maintain CI/CD pipelines and GitOps workflows to automate service delivery and ensure consistent infrastructure changes.
Enhance observability and incident response readiness through systems like Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana, and Thanos, defining and tracking SLOs.
Collaborate closely with development and security teams to ensure smooth operation of SaaS services in compliance with reliability, security, and regulatory standards.
Participate in a global 24/7 on-call rotation and drive continuous improvement of operational playbooks and postmortem practices.
Lead and contribute to scaling initiatives that improve elasticity, reliability, and cost-efficiency across the SaaS platform.
What You’ll Bring:
BS in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience.
Proven experience managing SaaS or PaaS systems at enterprise scale (multi-region, multi-tenant, secure environments).
Deep expertise in Kubernetes, including debugging cluster/networking issues and designing for fault tolerance and scalability.
Strong proficiency with Infrastructure as Code tools like Terraform or Terragrunt.
Experience with CI/CD pipelines and GitOps workflows (ArgoCD, Atlantis, Helm).
Proficiency in one or more programming languages (Go, Python, Bash) for automation and tooling.
Solid understanding of Linux/Unix systems, networking (DNS, TLS/SSL, HTTP), load balancers and distributed systems.
Experiencing working with API gateway and service mesh technologies
Familiarity with streaming systems like Kafka and observability platforms (Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana).
Experience working in a 24/7/365 production support environment.
Bonus Points:
Hands-on experience with Kong Gateway, Kong Mesh, or similar service connectivity technologies.
Experience operating ClickHouse, Druid, or other time-series and analytics databases.
Experience managing PostgreSQL and Redis in multi-region configurations.
Working knowledge of AWS networking (PrivateLink, Transit Gateway, VPC Peering, Firewalls), Azure VNet, or GCP NCC.
Strong understanding of disaster recovery, resiliency testing, and compliance-driven reliability practices.
#LI-KC1
About Kong:
Kong 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.
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