Senior Staff Software Engineer - Agent Marketplace

Kong Inc. is a leading developer of API and AI connectivity technologies, building infrastructure for the agentic era. The Senior Staff Software Engineer will architect and build scalable, high-performance systems for agent-to-API and agent-to-agent transactions, driving cross-functional execution and mentoring engineers within a zero-to-one engineering squad focused on marketplace infrastructure.

Responsibilities:

• Architect and own the end-to-end full-stack surfaces of the marketplace loop, delivering high-performance tools, the underlying REST API substrate, and developer-facing onboarding systems
• Design the foundational agent-native user experience, creating robust Model Context Protocol (MCP) server capabilities, sandboxed test environments, and elegant CLI/SDK generation workflows
• Scale and protect the transaction infrastructure by building high-reliability pipelines for programmatic identity verification, usage attribution, granular metering, and complex multi-party settlement
• Drive cross-functional execution across Kong's engineering ecosystem, partnering with gateway runtime, security plugins, and global core teams to smoothly integrate marketplace features
• Lead architectural design reviews and champion a zero-technical-debt culture while proactively preventing scaling bottlenecks across distributed backend components
• Mentor engineers across the organization, multiplying the team's output by translating ambiguous product bets into highly defined, modular, and shippable technical milestones
• Own the technical lifecycle completely by writing crystal-clear engineering documentation and product specifications for every system you architect

Requirements:

• 7+ years of experience engineering enterprise-grade production software with a proven capability to design, build, and support complex distributed systems from scratch
• Master-level expertise with a modern backend stack (such as Golang or similar systems languages) alongside deep architectural command of API infrastructure, Kubernetes, and cloud-native patterns
• Extensive hands-on experience developing autonomous agent applications, tool-calling systems, prompt loops, or systems designed explicitly for machine consumption
• Deep operational familiarity with multi-tenant architectures, usage-based metering pipelines, billing integration patterns, or secure data exchange layers
• Strong written communication and technical articulation skills, with an unwavering comfort operating within remote, globally distributed engineering environments
• West Coast/Bay Area alignment preferred