Staff Product Manager, AI Management

Are you ready to unlock intelligence?

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.

The Mission:

At Kong, we are building the future of AI connectivity, empowering developers to connect, secure, govern, and scale their AI applications with speed and intelligence. As a Staff Product Manager for AI Management, you will own the product direction for our fastest-growing agentic AI portfolio—including our flagship AI Gateway—serving as a critical strategic lever in the Agentic Era. You will bridge high-impact technical innovation with enterprise runtime governance, context management, and developer platform experience to turn APIs and AI connectivity into an organizational innovation factory.

What You’ll Do:

• Architect and execute the product vision and roadmap for AI Management modules, driving core capabilities around agentic harnesses, LLM routing, policies, context, guardrails, and evaluation.

• Lead cross-departmental strategy as a multiplier across engineering, design, product marketing, and executive leadership to align shared roadmaps without operational friction.

• Own the full lifecycle of your product modules by writing precise specs, prioritizing backlogs, and balancing new feature delivery against technical debt and platform dependencies.

• Drive cross-product work connecting AI Management to Kong’s core platform infrastructure, enabling seamless data plane and control plane integration.

• Speed up the clock on high-velocity delivery cadences in close partnership with engineering leads to scope work, navigate trade-offs, and accelerate time to market.

• Support regional field activities, customer-facing technical engagements, and sales enablement to validate product-market fit and ensure developer delight.

What You’ll Bring:

• 7-10 years of technical product management experience owning and shipping technical products in developer tools, API platforms, or AI infrastructure.

• Demonstrated ability to translate complex technical challenges—such as Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, request routing, data plane architectures, and transport trade-offs—into actionable product requirements.

• Proven track record driving execution and managing dependencies across globally distributed R&D teams.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills to articulate technical strategy across multiple functions and seniority levels.

• Deep project management instincts to track work, surface blockers early, and keep cross-functional roadmaps on schedule.

The Kong DNA:

• Ownership: You act as a driver, not a passenger, holding yourself accountable for product outcomes, runtime performance, and customer success.

• Urgency: You model speed and efficiency in everything you do, navigating the fast-paced pre-IPO landscape with grit and focus.

• Collaboration: You lead like an API by working cross-functionally, breaking down silos, and building alignment across global teams.

Bonus Points:

• Direct experience with agentic AI development, including AI agents, AI gateways, LLM routing, AI observability, prompt management, guardrails, MCP servers, and A2A communications.

• Familiarity with enterprise platform engineering, Kubernetes, cloud-native architectures, control planes, and data planes.

#LI-MP1

About Kong:

Kong Inc., the AI Connectivity Company, is building the connectivity layer of AI. Trusted by the Fortune 500 and AI-native startups alike, Kong’s unified API and AI platform enables organizations to secure, manage, accelerate, govern, and monetize the flow of intelligence across APIs and AI traffic — on any model, any cloud. For more information, visit .

Compensation Range: $175K - $210K

Location

San Francisco, California, United States

Employment Type

Full time

Location Type

On-site

Department

All Cost Center R&D Product

Compensation

• $175K – $210K • Offers Equity • Offers Bonus

Compensation decisions are based on various factors, including, but not limited to, experience, skills, certifications, location, and business needs. Employees may be eligible for additional benefits, including health, dental, and vision insurance, paid holidays and PTO; and professional development opportunities and tools.