The Opportunity

Are you ready to power the World's connections? 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 The Engineering Manager for the AI Platform team will lead a team of AI/ML engineers, applied scientists, and platform engineers building Kong's next-generation AI capabilities. You'll be responsible for building and scaling a high-performing team, driving technical execution, and collaborating with product and leadership to define the roadmap for AI features across Kong's platform. This role requires a strong technical background in either AI/ML or platform engineering, proven people management experience, and the ability to navigate the rapidly evolving AI landscape while delivering production-ready systems at scale.

What You'll Do

Lead, mentor, and grow a team of 6-10 engineers, including AI/ML engineers, applied scientists, and platform engineers.
Build a strong engineering culture focused on innovation, quality, collaboration, and continuous learning in the AI domain.
Drive technical execution across multiple parallel initiatives, ensuring timely delivery of high-quality AI features.
Partner with product managers to define roadmaps, prioritize work, and align team efforts with business objectives.
Conduct regular 1:1s, provide coaching and feedback, and support career development for all team members.
Lead hiring efforts to scale the team, including defining role requirements, conducting interviews, and making hiring decisions.
Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including Gateway, Dev Portal, and other product teams, to integrate AI capabilities.
Establish engineering best practices for AI/ML development, including evaluation frameworks, safety guardrails, and responsible AI principles.
Drive technical strategy and architectural decisions for AI platform services and infrastructure.
Manage team performance through goal setting, performance reviews, and fostering accountability.
Balance innovation and experimentation with pragmatic delivery of production systems.
Communicate technical progress, challenges, and strategic recommendations to senior leadership.
Own incident response and operational excellence for AI platform services.
Advocate for the team's needs in terms of resources, tooling, and organizational support.

What You'll Bring

3+ years of engineering management experience leading teams of 5+ engineers.
8+ years of total software engineering experience with a strong technical background in one or more of AI/ML engineering, distributed systems, or platform engineering.
Demonstrated success building and scaling high-performing engineering teams.
Experience managing teams working on AI/ML systems, large language models, or ML infrastructure (strongly preferred).
Strong technical credibility with the ability to engage in architecture discussions, code reviews, and technical decision-making.
Experience hiring, onboarding, and developing engineers at different seniority levels.
Proven ability to drive execution on complex, ambiguous projects with multiple stakeholders.
Strong communication skills with the ability to influence across technical and non-technical audiences.
Experience working in fast-paced environments and balancing competing priorities.
Understanding of modern AI/ML technologies, including LLMs, vector databases, and ML infrastructure.
Knowledge of cloud platforms (AWS preferred) and container orchestration (Kubernetes).
Experience with agile development methodologies and iterative delivery practices.
Track record of fostering inclusive and collaborative team environments.
Ability to provide technical guidance while empowering teams to make decisions.
Experience managing globally distributed teams across multiple time zones.

Bonus Points

Experience managing teams building production AI/ML applications or ML platforms.
Background as an AI/ML engineer, data scientist, or ML platform engineer.
Experience with AWS AI/ML services (Bedrock, SageMaker) or similar platforms.
Knowledge of LLM application development, prompt engineering, or agentic workflows.
Experience in API Gateway, developer tools, or platform engineering domains.
Understanding of responsible AI practices, AI safety, and alignment principles.
Experience managing teams through 0-to-1 product development.
Track record of technical writing, conference speaking, or thought leadership in AI/ML.
Experience with performance management and difficult conversations.
Background in building MLOps infrastructure or ML engineering platforms.
Familiarity with Kong's products or the API management ecosystem.
Experience managing teams supporting high-availability SaaS or PaaS offerings.
Knowledge of compliance frameworks and building audit-ready AI systems.
Experience collaborating with research teams or applied scientists.
Active involvement in AI/ML communities or open-source contributions.

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.