Software Engineering Manager, AI Gateway - Milan
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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

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.
Senior Level Information

Seniority level: Mid-Senior level
Employment type: Full-time
Job function: Engineering and Information Technology
Industries: Software Development

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