Software Engineering Manager, AI Gateway - Milan

Are you ready to power the World's connections?

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 be the leader of 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.

You will need strong technical leadership and a solid background in AI and LLM technologies, so you are able to technically challenge engineers and ensure that they keep growing, make valuable contributions, and generally have a great experience in Kong. You will have the opportunity to influence the culture, facilitate technical delivery, and work with your team on strategy and execution.

What you'll be doing:

• Hire, mentor, and maintain healthy Engineering teams who value collaboration and innovation.

• Manage work assignments, measure key performance indicators (KPIs), assure high-quality work and SLA.

• Own the customer escalation system technically, including collaboration with other departments, stakeholders (Sales, Customer Experience, Sales Engineering etc.) and where necessary customers.

• Organize and manage your teams to fit constructively into the org as a whole and help the company succeed.

• Set and manage expectations with other engineering teams, senior management, and external stakeholders.

• Give constructive feedback to Engineers, conduct 1:1s, address inter-personal issues, and conduct performance reviews.

What you'll bring:

• 5+ years of managing engineering teams and obsessing over customer experience

• Solid technical expertise for AI and LLM in one or more of the following:

  • APIs, models and consumption models for different providers

  • Self-hosted models

  • RAG and Vector Databases

  • MCP

• Experience managing performance reviews, hiring, compensation.

• Experience managing remote teams and distributed workforce

• Demonstrated leadership of Engineering teams

• On-premise, cloud and hybrid product background

• Proven customer relationship skills sets

• Business fluent English language skills both written and verbal

  • Experience managing Rust projects

Bonus Points:

• Hands-on experience in managing NGINX/OpenResty backend services

• Experience managing projects in an Enterprise Software company

#LI-BR2

About Kong:

Kong Inc., a leading developer of cloud API technologies, is on a mission to enable companies around the world to become “API-first” and securely accelerate AI adoption. Kong helps organizations globally — from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises — unleash developer productivity, build securely, and accelerate time to market. For more information about Kong, please visit www.konghq.com or follow us on X @thekonginc.