Kong AI Gateway Engineer

Senior Engineer

Where ambition meets innovation. Build a career that matches all your initiative with an impressive dose of innovation. From cutting-edge resources and a collaborative environment to the freedom to make an impact and more, you'll find the ingredients you need at LPL Financial to shape your success while helping clients pursue their financial goals.

Join us in building the AI integration foundation for the enterprise. This role offers the opportunity to work at the intersection of software engineering, API gateways, and AI/LLM enablement—helping teams across the organization securely and reliably route AI and MCP traffic at scale.

As a Senior Engineer on the Middleware team, you will play a key role in evolving our Kong AI Gateway platform, supporting enterprise adoption of AI capabilities, and enabling development teams through well-designed patterns, tooling, and documentation.

The Middleware team is responsible for the operational reliability, extensibility, and evolution of the Kong AI Gateway platform. This Senior Engineer role is an individual contributor position focused on designing, building, and maintaining gateway capabilities that support AI/LLM integrations across the enterprise.

You will collaborate closely with Product and Technology partners, contribute hands-on engineering work, and help define reusable solutions that make AI integrations easier, safer, and more scalable for internal teams.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with Product and Technology teams to maximize the value delivered by the Kong AI Gateway platform
• Build, enhance, and maintain Kong gateway capabilities supporting MCP and LLM traffic
• Design and develop Kong plugins for authentication, rate limiting (including token-based throttling), logging, and request/response transformation
• Develop internal tools and solutions that improve how teams integrate AI capabilities across the organization
• Maintain platform health through upgrades, configuration management, and operational best practices
• Write and maintain technical documentation and knowledge base articles to support platform adoption and usage
• Contribute to reusable patterns and reference implementations that enable consistent onboarding across teams

We're looking for a curious, detail-oriented technologist who enjoys learning how complex systems work and collaborating across teams. You bring a strong analytical mindset, solid technical fundamentals, and a desire to grow your impact in platform and architecture-focused work.

Required Qualifications

• 6+ years of relevant software development experience
• 2+ years experience implementing Kong API Gateway and/or AI Gateway solutions in enterprise environments
• 6+ years experience with APIs, containers, and microservices architectures
• 6+ years experience with application development using multiple programming languages
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent practical experience

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Google Apigee, IBM API Connect, or IBM DataPower
• Experience supporting shared platforms used by multiple development teams
• Familiarity with enterprise security, governance, and compliance considerations for API platforms

Core Competencies

• Systems thinking and platform-oriented design
• Clear technical communication across engineering and non-engineering audiences
• Problem-solving mindset with a focus on scalable solutions
• Continuous learning and adaptability in evolving AI and platform ecosystems

Pay Range: $101,970.00 - $169,950.00 Actual base salary varies based on factors, including but not limited to, relevant skill, prior experience, education, base salary of internal peers, demonstrated performance, and geographic location. Additionally, LPL Total Rewards package is highly competitive, designed to support your success at work, at home, and at play – such as 401K matching, health benefits, employee stock options, paid time off, volunteer time off, and more. Your recruiter will be happy to discuss all that LPL has to offer!

LPL Financial Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: LPLA) is among the fastest growing wealth management firms in the U.S. As a leader in the financial advisor-mediated marketplace, LPL supports over 32,000 financial advisors and the wealth management practices of approximately 1,100 financial institutions, servicing and custodying approximately $2.3 trillion in brokerage and advisory assets on behalf of approximately 8 million Americans. The firm provides a wide range of advisor affiliation models, investment solutions, fintech tools and practice management services, ensuring that advisors and institutions have the flexibility to choose the business model, services, and technology resources they need to run thriving businesses. For further information about LPL, please visit

At LPL, independence means that advisors and institution leaders have the freedom they deserve to choose the business model, services, and technology resources that allow them to run a thriving business. They have the flexibility to do business their way. And they have the freedom to manage their client relationships, because they know their clients best. Simply put, we take care of our advisors and institutions, so they can take care of their clients.

For further information about LPL, please visit

Join the LPL team and help us make a difference by turning life's aspirations into financial realities. Please log in or create an account to apply to this position. Principals only. EOE.

Information on Interviews: LPL will only communicate with a job applicant directly from an @lplfinancial.com email address and will never conduct an interview online or in a chatroom forum. During an interview, LPL will not request any form of payment from the applicant, or information regarding an applicant's bank or credit card. Should you have any questions regarding the application process, please contact LPL's Human Resources Solutions Center at View phone number on click.appcast.io.