Kong Lead Developer

Job Title:

Kong Lead Developer Location:

Fort Mill SC (5 Days onsite)

Duration:

Long term Contract Role Summary We are looking for a Sr. Kong Middleware Engineer or Kong Lead with strong hands-on experience around API Services implementation and providing Best Practices solutions in Kong platform. Key Responsibilities Design and implement APIs using Kong Gateway (services, routes, upstreams, plugins). Provide best design patterns, security patterns and testing patterns in Kong platform. Implement API security patterns including OAuth2/OIDC, JWT, mTLS, rate limiting, and traffic controls. Deploy and operate Kong and APIs on AWS (EKS/ECS/EC2, ALB/NLB, IAM, VPC, CloudWatch). Implement CI/CD pipelines for Kong configurations services. Put guardrails around API deployment to higher environment using best practices in Kong. Recommend Kong plugins Enable monitoring, logging, and operational support for APIs and gateway components. Collaborate with architects, SRE/operations, and security teams in an onsite delivery model. Required Qualifications 8+ years of software development experience with strong API/backend focus. 2+ years of Kong API Gateway experience in leading the implementation. Native Kong plugin development experience using Lua/OpenResty is a plus. Experience integrating with .NET / C# applications with Kong platform. Solid understanding of API security, governance, and performance best practices. Experience deploying Kong containers and nodes on AWS cloud. Experience with Docker, Kubernetes (EKS preferred), Git, and CI/CD pipelines. Strong communication and collaboration skills. Core Skills Kong Gateway | Lua/OpenResty | AWS | API Security | CI/CD | API Design Patterns