Role overview

Kong is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer for the EMEA region to help enterprise customers successfully deploy their first production AI use cases. You will work directly with customer platform, security and engineering teams to deliver real, working AI solutions—not demos or prototypes that stall. This role bridges customer success and Kong’s internal engineering, taking what you learn from the field back into product development to accelerate future deals.

Key responsibilities

Lead technical discovery conversations with customer platform, security and engineering teams around AI, APIs and agentic workflows.
Design end-to-end runtime architecture covering models, APIs, model context protocol (MCP), tool access, identity and policy enforcement.
Build prototypes, integrations, evaluation flows and reference implementations that demonstrate Kong’s ability to govern real production AI traffic.
Remove technical blockers during pilot and production phases, including authentication, network, observability, latency and cost challenges.
Own the complete technical path from pilot stage through to production deployment, staying engaged until the workload is live.
Document patterns and solutions you build so that subsequent AI Gateway implementations can be delivered faster and more cost-effectively.
Work regularly alongside Kong’s internal engineering team on AI Gateway and agentic product development, pairing on roadmap priorities and feeding field learnings directly to Product.

Requirements

Demonstrated hands-on software engineering experience shipping production systems in languages such as Go, Python, TypeScript or similar.
Prior experience in a customer-facing technical role such as forward-deployed engineer, solutions architect, staff engineer or technical consultant.
Enterprise architecture capability: ability to design solutions that respect identity, network, security and observability constraints in complex environments.
Production experience with large language models and agents, including deep knowledge of agent frameworks, model selection and routing, prompt engineering, tool calling, retrieval systems, testing and evaluation methodologies, and trade-offs around cost, latency and reliability.
Hands-on experience with API gateways and infrastructure technologies including Kubernetes, service mesh, OAuth/OIDC, mTLS and policy enforcement.
Direct experience building or deploying Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, with clear understanding of how agents discover and invoke tools and how identity and access control flow through those interactions.
Strong written and verbal communication in English; additional European languages are valued.

What makes this role worth considering

This position offers genuine technical impact rather than a sales-focused or purely implementation-based track. You will own outcomes end to end and drive strategic customer outcomes while simultaneously shaping Kong’s product direction based on real field experience. The role requires willingness to travel to customer sites across EMEA, offering regular engagement with some of the region’s most important enterprises.