# Senior Software Engineer, Control Plane

**Company:** [Kong](https://zerogtalent.com/ai-companies/kong)
**Location:** Milan, Italy
**Work mode:** Hybrid
**Seniority:** Senior
**Employment type:** Full Time
**Salary:** EUR 77K–95K/yr
**Category:** Software
**Department:** Other
**Listed:** 2026-10-23

[View and apply on Zero G Talent](https://zerogtalent.com/ai-jobs/kong/senior-software-engineer-control-plane-185f8e98-b9b5-4196-bf2c-d7c5cc84ec09)

## What you'll do

- Design and implement Kong Gateway Control Plane features in Golang
- Own full service lifecycle: design, implementation, deployment, operations
- Lead architectural decisions to ensure 99.99% uptime
- Influence cloud-native technical roadmap and distributed systems best practices
- Mentor engineers via code reviews and design sessions

## What you need

- Significant production Golang experience
- Deep distributed systems, microservices, API design knowledge
- Hands-on Kubernetes and cloud-native ecosystem experience
- Proficiency with PostgreSQL relational databases
- Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure-as-code

## 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.

  

### **The Mission**

The Control Plane team architects the central nervous system of Kong's entire ecosystem. We build the high-performance, resilient, and scalable services that enable our users to configure and manage billions of API calls with confidence. This role is at the heart of delivering a world-class developer experience, ensuring our platform is not just powerful, but also intuitive and reliable at enterprise scale.

  

### **What You’ll Do**

-   Design and implement core features for the Kong Gateway Control Plane, primarily using Golang.
    
-   Own the full lifecycle of services, from architectural design and implementation to deployment and operational excellence.
    
-   Lead technical discussions and architectural decisions to prevent technical debt and ensure our commitment to 99.99% uptime.
    
-   Influence the technical roadmap for our cloud-native components, advocating for best practices in a distributed systems environment.
    
-   Mentor other engineers through thoughtful code reviews and design sessions, fostering a culture of high-quality code and developer delight.
    
-   Collaborate with product managers and other engineering teams to architect and deliver impactful solutions for our global user base.
    
-   Resolve complex bugs and performance bottlenecks in our core networking and configuration management components.
    

  

### **What You’ll Bring**

  

### **The Toolkit**

-   Significant professional experience writing and deploying production services in Golang.
    
-   Deep understanding of distributed systems, microservices architecture, and API design principles.
    
-   Hands-on experience with Kubernetes (K8s) and the cloud-native ecosystem.
    
-   Proficiency with relational databases, such as PostgreSQL.
    
-   Familiarity with modern CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure-as-code practices.
    

### **The Kong DNA**

-   Ownership: A proactive, self-starting mindset with a bias for action and a sense of responsibility for the end-to-end user experience.
    
-   Urgency: The ability to thrive in a fast-paced, pre-IPO environment, delivering high-impact work on ambitious timelines without sacrificing quality.
    
-   Collaboration: Excellent communication skills and a team-first attitude, adept at working across functions to achieve common goals.
    

### **Bonus Points**

-   Experience with API gateways, service mesh (like Kuma), or related networking technologies.
    
-   Active contributions to open-source projects.
    
-   Knowledge of Lua or NGINX internals.
    
-   Experience building and managing large-scale SaaS platforms.
    
      
    

#LI-EA1

  

**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](http://www.konghq.com).

## Other open roles at Kong

- [Regional Sales Director, Nordics (Sweden)](https://zerogtalent.com/ai-jobs/kong/regional-sales-director-nordics-sweden-ca5e9f81-1f0f-4764-a6f6-590a5cceb782) — Sweden
- [Software Engineer 2, AI Gateway](https://zerogtalent.com/ai-jobs/kong/software-engineer-2-ai-gateway-89265243-4f58-42bb-9488-9713c0eb108e) — Milan, Italy
- [Senior Software Engineer, AI Gateway](https://zerogtalent.com/ai-jobs/kong/senior-software-engineer-ai-gateway-5e66a1eb-2709-4cb5-b446-f8e5a33d5544) — Milan, Italy
- [Account Development Representative](https://zerogtalent.com/ai-jobs/kong/account-development-representative-2ac2d02c-1801-4c0e-b6b2-63a76ec107a6) — England, United Kingdom
- [Senior Software Engineer, AI Gateway - Shanghai](https://zerogtalent.com/ai-jobs/kong/senior-software-engineer-ai-gateway-b276f79f-d60e-44d0-9786-1e3cc874d909) — Shanghai, China

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*Source: [Zero G Talent](https://zerogtalent.com), the job board for space, defense, AI, robotics and frontier-tech companies.*