Staff Solutions Engineer - AI Specialist
San Francisco, CAFull-timePosted 2w agoStill listed today
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At a glance
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Job overview
Kong is seeking a Staff Solutions Engineer to advise enterprise customers on secure, scalable API ecosystems and AI connectivity. The role supports sales and customer evaluations, validates technical fit, and shapes technical strategy for complex deals. It also includes demonstrating API and AI governance capabilities, mentoring junior engineers, sharing thought leadership, and bringing customer feedback to product teams.
Skills & qualifications
Skills
Qualifications
Full job description
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: Are you ready to sit at the epicenter of the API and AI connectivity revolution? As a Staff Solutions Engineer at Kong, you won’t just be selling a platform — you’ll be a trusted technical advisor helping the world’s most innovative enterprises architect secure, scalable API ecosystems while navigating the transition into the agentic AI era. Kong sits at the intersection of API management and AI connectivity, and you’ll be the person who makes that story real for customers.
What You’ll Do:
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Support field sales in helping customers understand the value of the Kong API and AI connectivity platform.
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Conduct discovery conversations to understand customer requirements and map them to Kong solutions, from initial product reviews through to production.
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Support POCs throughout the entire evaluation process, owning technical validation and stakeholder alignment.
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Ensure customer satisfaction across your assigned set of accounts.
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Collaborate with support, product, and engineering teams to advocate for customer needs.
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Create technical documentation for DevOps, implementations, and services engagements.
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Lead and support API Management and AI Goverance evaluations, including scoping API/AI use cases, LLM traffic management, and governance requirements.
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Deliver demonstrations of Kong’s API & AI governance and agentic connectivity capabilities, including Model Context Protocol (MCP) governance, semantic caching, prompt guardrails, and shadow AI detection.
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Run API & AI-focused Technical Feasibility Workshops (TFWs) to validate Kong’s fit for modern and/or AI/agentic architectures.
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Own the technical strategy for complex, multi-stakeholder enterprise deals from qualification through close.
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Mentor and coach junior SEs on technical skills, discovery methods, and deal strategy.
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Drive thought leadership by authoring technical blogs, hosting webinars, speaking at industry events and conferences such as AWS re:Invent, Google Next, API & AI summit, and regional events
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Influence product direction by synthesizing customer feedback and market signals into actionable input for the product team.
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And any additional tasks required by manager.
What You’ll Bring:
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7+ years of software engineering and/or solutions engineering experience at a SaaS, open source, or enterprise software company.
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Proven track record owning complex, enterprise-level deals with multiple technical and executive stakeholders.
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Experience mentoring or coaching other SEs or technical team members.
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Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud-native platforms.
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Experience with REST and GraphQL APIs, CI/CD pipelines, and API security patterns (OAuth2, OIDC, mTLS).
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Hands-on experience with AI-assisted development tooling — Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, OpenAI Codex, or equivalent is required.
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Working knowledge of AI/LLM architectures, including model routing, rate limiting, semantic caching, and prompt governance.
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Familiarity with Model Context Protocol (MCP) and agentic AI patterns.
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Solid understanding of cloud computing trends and open source business models.
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Strong listener and communicator — you can confidently lead discussions with engineers, architects, and executives.
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Enthusiasm for working in a high-profile, fast-paced environment at the intersection of API and AI connectivity.
#LI-MP1
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.
How this job compares
Set against the 1,493 open Solutions Engineer jobs on Olive Jobs, counted November 10, 2026.
- Pay
- This postingNot listed
- California median$167–232K/yr287 salary ranges
- Openings
- Olive Jobs lists 368 open Solutions Engineer jobs in California and 1,493 across the US. 26% of them nationwide are listed as remote or flexible.
- Experience
- Solutions Engineer postings that state a minimum ask for 5 years of experience at the median; the middle half ask for 3 to 7 years (1,150 postings).
- Education
- 254 of the 1,493 open Solutions Engineer jobs (17%) ask for a bachelor's degree or higher.
Counted across the open, public US postings on Olive Jobs on November 10, 2026. Pay medians are the middle values of the low ends and of the high ends of postings that list both ends of a range in the same cadence (a yearly salary or an hourly rate); a range's midpoint is halfway between its ends. Pay and experience figures resting on fewer than 20 postings are left out.
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