Sr. Kong Middleware Engineer or Kong Lead

Sr. Kong Middleware Engineer or Kong Lead (Fort Mill, SC), (Austin, TX) | 03/18/26 Job Description Sr. Kong Middleware Engineer or Kong 

Lead Location:

 Fort Mill, SC

• 1 Role, Austin, TX
• 1 Role Job Type
• 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 Sr. Kong Middleware Engineer or Kong Lead1Middleware, Kong ContractUnited States