# Software Engineer AI Gateway

**Company:** [Kong](https://zerogtalent.com/ai-companies/kong)
**Location:** Milan, Italy
**Work mode:** Hybrid
**Employment type:** Full Time
**Salary:** EUR 64K–79K/yr
**Category:** Software
**Department:** Other
**Listed:** 2026-06-17

[View and apply on Zero G Talent](https://zerogtalent.com/ai-jobs/kong/software-engineer-ai-gateway-ebffb0f9-dbdd-4e65-a1ea-efe5add8a1cb)

## 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:**

You will join the engineering team that builds the Kong AI gateway, empowering companies and developers around the world to govern every step of their AI & LLM based innovation.

As a Software Engineer in the AI Gateway Team, you will be working on core features such as multi-LLM routing and balancing, semantic caching and routing, MCP, and more.

**What You'll Do:**

-   Responsible for building and maintaining API management software for AI and LLMs and its underlying stack.
    
-   Implement new innovative features including proxying capabilities, load balancing, databases support that extend Kong AI Gateway’s offering.
    
-   Bugs troubleshooting, performance tuning and low-level optimizations.
    
-   Fill the gaps between Kong and third-party deployment platforms and tooling.
    
-   Any additional tasks required by manager.
    

**What You'll Bring:**

-   3+ years of programming in server-side applications and components.
    
-   Hands on experience with either Golang or Rust
    
-   Experience building and debugging applications that are highly scalable, distributed, reliable and resilient.
    
-   Solid hands-on low-level technical expertise in Linux systems troubleshooting, and profiling.
    
-   Experience in distributed systems, Linux networking stack and computer systems programming, Kong works with APIs on both L7 and L4 transports and protocols, so this expertise and knowledge are required.
    
-   Comfortable working with a remotely distributed team.
    
-   Strong sense of ownership and excellent verbal and written communication skills -- engineers at Kong write the documentation for their products
    
-   Familiarity with AI LLM concepts and applications development
    
      
    

**Bonus Points:**

-   Hands on experience with NGINX/OpenResty/Kong/LuaJIT.
    
-   Hands on experience with Envoy or Istio.
    

#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

- [Staff Engagement Manager](https://zerogtalent.com/ai-jobs/kong/staff-engagement-manager-e639ad3b-1e47-497d-bcfa-08eb38138f64) — California, United States
- [Staff Solutions Engineer](https://zerogtalent.com/ai-jobs/kong/staff-solutions-engineer-14ffa12e-4f6c-45e9-8c3f-666026d6a90c) — New York, United States
- [Senior Director, GTM People Business Partner](https://zerogtalent.com/ai-jobs/kong/senior-director-gtm-people-business-partner-8ebee634-af4f-4d4e-8cfe-f7852e5bb01b) — California, United States
- [AI Evangelist - EMEA](https://zerogtalent.com/ai-jobs/kong/ai-evangelist-emea-5d8b92a9-3fd9-4b7a-810d-b1eb2d3b6adb) — England, United Kingdom
- [Forward Deployed Engineer AI Gateway EMEA](https://zerogtalent.com/ai-jobs/kong/forward-deployed-engineer-ai-gateway-emea-3e5ef5b8-686d-4915-b436-26bcd2140951) — England, United Kingdom

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