Kong APIM Engineer
A client of ours is looking for a Kong APIM Engineer for a 6 month contract opportunity. Qualified candidates will have the following qualifications:
Required skills:
- 5-8 years experience in APIM management tools with a specialization in KONG
- Deep expertise in managing and optimizing API gateways, specifically KONG, and play a key role in implementing, configuring, and maintaining API management solutions for our organization.
- Performance, reliability, and scalability of KONG API Gateway, while also driving integration with other systems and troubleshooting any issues that arise.
- Experience with Kubernetes, Redis cache and any other AWS infra components needed to support Kong in AWS.
- Create scalable, optimized and secure Kubernetes-based infrastructure. Experience to apply kong patches to Kubernetes cluster
- Experience with Observability tool (OTEL framework) with deep skills in Datadog and Splunk for metrics and logs respectively.
- LUA Experience and ideally experience in writing with writing Kong plugins in LUA.
- Experience in migrating APIM platforms
- Experience working in SaaS environment and enabling application teams to aid with API adoption and onboarding.
Nice to haves:
- Experience in APIGEE Edge
- Proxy migration experience from APIGEE Edge to KONG
Responsibilities:
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams to define API requirements, integrations, and standards.
- Implement and manage API security policies, including OAuth, JWT, rate limiting, IP filtering, and other industry-standard security protocols.
- Monitor and analyze API performance using KONG’s built-in tools and third-party monitoring solutions, identifying opportunities for optimization.
- Custom Plugin Development: Design and implement custom KONG plugins using Lua to meet specific business needs, such as advanced authentication, logging, rate limiting, and custom transformations.
- Monitoring, Logging & Tracing: Implement custom logging, monitoring, and distributed tracing capabilities through plugins to capture meaningful metrics, errors, and system health information. Use tracing tools (e.g., OpenTelemetry, Jaeger) to provide end-to-end visibility of API calls and identify performance bottlenecks.
- Develop reusable, efficient, and well-documented Lua scripts for KONG plugins that extend its capabilities beyond the default functionality.
- Provide documentation, training, and support to internal teams and stakeholders on KONG and API management practices.
- Solid understanding of API management principles, including versioning, documentation, and security best practices.
- Hands-on experience with API management features such as rate limiting, load balancing, authentication, logging, and monitoring.
- Proficiency in managing cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure) and working with cloud-based API Gateway services.
- Ability to work effectively in an agile development environment and communicate with stakeholders at all levels.
This is a high PRIORITY requisition.