Staff Solutions Architect

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: We are looking for a Staff Solutions Architect to join the growing Professional Services team at Kong. As a Staff Solutions Architect, you will be responsible for leading and guiding our customers throughout their technical journey with Kong, ensuring they receive the utmost value from their investment in our products. You'll serve as a technical advisor to many of our enterprise customers, consulting their teams through the architecture, implementation, deployment, and rollout phases of Kong technology and setting them up for long-term success. The work you do is instrumental in driving the adoption, overall satisfaction, and retention of our customers. In this role, you will interface and collaborate with a variety of peers and partners as well as everyone in the customer environment from Developers to Executives, representing Kong culture and values every day. Apart from driving the successful delivery of customer-facing engagements, you will also with working and collaborating closely with Kong’s different cross-functional teams(Product, Engineering, Customer Success, CRE, and others). Working at Kong presents a unique opportunity to combine that challenge with the chance to help modernize enterprise software and learn about how businesses run in the digital age. What's in it for you? This is an opportunity to work on cutting-edge, innovative customer projects involving new and exciting technology with diverse people all over the world. The knowledge you gain on our products and customer use cases will be applied to real-world usage and contribute to the continued innovation and enhancement of our technology. As a valuable member of the Kong professional services team, the work you do will be critical to our growth and success. You’ll be given thought leadership to help define what ‘good’ looks like in terms of production deployments, what is recommended, and why.

What we are looking for:

• 8+ years of relevant within professional services/support or other custom facing hands on technical role
• Hands-on implementation experience with API gateway and/or API integrations in customer environments
• Infrastructure build experience with virtual machines or Containers using Kubernetes
• Knowledge of DevOps, Security fundamentals, & Networking fundamentals
• Proficient in Linux environments including Cloud and Development tooling
• Kubernetes proficiency/ experience
• Experience with major cloud providers such as GCP, AWS, and Azure
• Experience with application development is preferred
• Prior experience working in the Open Source space and/or API Management or other Middleware/SaaS software companies
• Software development experience in one or more programming languages such as Java, Python, or Lua
• A strong desire to tackle hard technical problems and proven ability do so with little or no direct daily supervision
• Excellent communication skills and an ability to concisely explain complex technical issues and solutions
• Passion and determination for technology
• Team-oriented nature with an enjoyment for collaboration
• Self-awareness and strong communication skills are a must
• Exceptional organizational and change management skills with an ability to manage competing client demands
• Proven team player, and team builder who loves to work in a fast-growing and roll up their sleeves in a dynamic environment and can keep pace with constant change.
• Ability to travel to customer and Kong locations as needed (post-COVID)
• And any additional tasks required by manager

What you will be doing:

• Helping customer(s) across their entire full API lifecycle journey. Such engagements often involve remote preparation, and leading technical workshops for customer architects, developers, security and operations teams. You will be responsible for building end to end solution architecture, solutions, addressing technical challenges, and providing hands-on technical implementation and configuration assistance across the Kong technology suite of products.
• Engaging with customers on billable projects, guiding them through the installation and implementation of Kong solutions in their environment.
• Lead customer discussions, driving outcome-based professional services and providing technical thought leadership across the customer adoption journey
• Collaborating internally with our Product Engineering, Customer Success, and Sales teams to ensure our customers are getting the most value out of their Kong solutions.
• Building tooling for another team or the wider company to help us push our technical boundaries and improve our ability to deliver consistently with high-quality
• Writing or editing technical documentation and knowledge base articles, including reference architecture materials, blogs, and design patterns based on customer experiences
• Producing tooling, informational documents/ white papers, and other marketing content.
• And any additional tasks required by manager
• Above all, you’ll be acting as a stellar teammate for the rest of Kong
• US Citizenship and TS/SCI clearance are a huge plus for this role

Kong has different base pay ranges for different work locations within the United States, which allows us to pay employees competitively and consistently in different geographic markets. Compensation varies depending on a wide array of factors, including but not limited to specific candidate location, role, skill set and level of experience. Certain roles are eligible for additional rewards including sales incentives depending on the terms of the applicable plan and role. Benefits may vary depending on location. US based employees are typically offered access to healthcare benefits, a 401(k) plan, short and long term disability benefits, basic life and AD&D insurance, among others. The typical base pay range for this role in the US is $134,800 - 160,000. About Kong: Kong is THE cloud native API platform with the fastest, most adopted API gateway in the world (over 300m downloads!). As the innovation leader of cloud API technologies, Kong is on a mission to enable companies around the world to become "API-first" and securely accelerate AI adoption. Kong helps organizations globally - from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises - unleash developer productivity, build securely and accelerate to market. 83% of web traffic today is API calls! APIs are the connective tissue of the cloud and the underlying technology that allows software to talk and interact with one another. Therefore, we believe that APIs act as the nervous system of the cloud. Our audacious mission is to build the nervous system that will safely and reliably connect all of humankind! For more information about Kong, please visit konghq.com or follow @thekonginc on Twitter. We are an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or veteran status. #LI-DNI #LI-BR1