Kong Inc.
Senior Staff Product Manager, AI Gateway
Kong Inc., San Francisco, California, United States, 94199
Overview
Join to apply for the
Senior Staff Product Manager, AI Gateway
role at
Kong Inc. . Base pay range
$177,030.00/yr - $221,287.00/yr 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. What You’ll Do
Define and Drive Product Vision: Own and evolve the product vision for Kong’s AI Gateway — a critical infrastructure layer for governing and accelerating GenAI workloads. Collaborate with engineering, design, field teams, and Kong’s CTO to ensure strategic clarity and technical feasibility across agentic AI use cases. Lead Execution: Work closely with engineering and design leads to define and deliver high-impact capabilities across caching, routing, security, and observability for LLM-powered applications. Ensure each release delivers meaningful value to enterprise customers and reinforces Kong’s differentiated position in the AI ecosystem. Shape Customer-Driven Strategy: Develop a deep understanding of how enterprises are adopting LLMs, agents, and GenAI workflows. Use insights from strategic customers, market trends, and internal usage to guide prioritization and product-market fit. Validate concepts through design partners and MVP iterations. Ensure Cross-Functional Alignment: Align engineering, GTM, and platform stakeholders on priority use cases, customer deliverables, and field enablement. Drive alignment across core platform teams when AI Gateway intersects with Konnect, Kong Gateway, or new runtime capabilities like MCP. Build Roadmaps and Launch Plans: Own and maintain a public-facing roadmap and internal planning artifacts. Partner with Product Marketing and Enablement to ensure field readiness and a clear narrative around product capabilities, roadmap, and competitive differentiation. Drive Communication and Leadership Visibility: Proactively communicate progress, decisions, and risks to executive stakeholders — including Kong’s CTO and product leadership. Translate technical details into strategic implications, ensuring the broader organization understands the “why” behind roadmap bets. What You’ll Bring
Experience: 8+ years of product management experience, including ownership of technical infrastructure or developer products at scale. Enterprise GTM Acumen: Proven success launching and growing enterprise-facing products — particularly those involving platform or middleware technologies. Comfort working across sales, marketing, and solution engineering to align roadmap with commercial goals. Technical Curiosity & Depth: Solid understanding of APIs, networking, middleware, or developer infrastructure. Experience with AI/ML concepts ideally a product that is being consumed by users: (e.g. LLMs, embeddings, prompt chaining) is preferred, though deep AI expertise is not required. Cross-Functional Leadership: Confidence engaging with diverse stakeholders — from field engineers to enterprise customers to the CTO — and translating their inputs into clear requirements, use cases, and prioritization frameworks. Execution Excellence: Ability to break down complex initiatives into iterative milestones and drive high-quality execution in partnership with engineering and design leads. Communication & Clarity: Strong written and verbal communicator. Able to frame technical trade-offs clearly and influence decisions across levels. 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. Compensation Range: $177K - $221.3K Details
Seniority level: Mid-Senior level Employment type: Full-time Job function: Product Management and Marketing Industries: Software Development
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Join to apply for the
Senior Staff Product Manager, AI Gateway
role at
Kong Inc. . Base pay range
$177,030.00/yr - $221,287.00/yr 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. What You’ll Do
Define and Drive Product Vision: Own and evolve the product vision for Kong’s AI Gateway — a critical infrastructure layer for governing and accelerating GenAI workloads. Collaborate with engineering, design, field teams, and Kong’s CTO to ensure strategic clarity and technical feasibility across agentic AI use cases. Lead Execution: Work closely with engineering and design leads to define and deliver high-impact capabilities across caching, routing, security, and observability for LLM-powered applications. Ensure each release delivers meaningful value to enterprise customers and reinforces Kong’s differentiated position in the AI ecosystem. Shape Customer-Driven Strategy: Develop a deep understanding of how enterprises are adopting LLMs, agents, and GenAI workflows. Use insights from strategic customers, market trends, and internal usage to guide prioritization and product-market fit. Validate concepts through design partners and MVP iterations. Ensure Cross-Functional Alignment: Align engineering, GTM, and platform stakeholders on priority use cases, customer deliverables, and field enablement. Drive alignment across core platform teams when AI Gateway intersects with Konnect, Kong Gateway, or new runtime capabilities like MCP. Build Roadmaps and Launch Plans: Own and maintain a public-facing roadmap and internal planning artifacts. Partner with Product Marketing and Enablement to ensure field readiness and a clear narrative around product capabilities, roadmap, and competitive differentiation. Drive Communication and Leadership Visibility: Proactively communicate progress, decisions, and risks to executive stakeholders — including Kong’s CTO and product leadership. Translate technical details into strategic implications, ensuring the broader organization understands the “why” behind roadmap bets. What You’ll Bring
Experience: 8+ years of product management experience, including ownership of technical infrastructure or developer products at scale. Enterprise GTM Acumen: Proven success launching and growing enterprise-facing products — particularly those involving platform or middleware technologies. Comfort working across sales, marketing, and solution engineering to align roadmap with commercial goals. Technical Curiosity & Depth: Solid understanding of APIs, networking, middleware, or developer infrastructure. Experience with AI/ML concepts ideally a product that is being consumed by users: (e.g. LLMs, embeddings, prompt chaining) is preferred, though deep AI expertise is not required. Cross-Functional Leadership: Confidence engaging with diverse stakeholders — from field engineers to enterprise customers to the CTO — and translating their inputs into clear requirements, use cases, and prioritization frameworks. Execution Excellence: Ability to break down complex initiatives into iterative milestones and drive high-quality execution in partnership with engineering and design leads. Communication & Clarity: Strong written and verbal communicator. Able to frame technical trade-offs clearly and influence decisions across levels. 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. Compensation Range: $177K - $221.3K Details
Seniority level: Mid-Senior level Employment type: Full-time Job function: Product Management and Marketing Industries: Software Development
#J-18808-Ljbffr