Senior Software Engineering Manager, Managed Gateways SREs

The Mission

As a Senior Software Engineering Manager for Managed Gateways SREs , you will lead the charge in defining the reliability, scalability, and operational excellence of Kong's critical managed services. Your team's unwavering commitment to 99.99%+ uptime and seamless performance directly empowers developers globally, fueling the Agentic Era by providing the robust infrastructure that underpins modern API-driven applications. You'll build this team in Toronto from the ground up, and in the early stages, you'll stay hands-on - directly in the work, not just directing it from a distance.

What You'll Do

• Build Kong's Managed Gateways SRE team in Toronto from the ground up - hiring, setting the bar, and staying hands-on in enterprise implementations as the team ramps.

• Act as a direct contributor to critical implementations and reliability work in the early stages, with outcomes that materially move the needle on Managed Gateways' growth and business performance.

• Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing team of Site Reliability Engineers dedicated to Kong's Managed Gateway offerings, in direct support of our critical enterprise customer base across the Americas and Europe.

• Architect and implement robust, scalable, and fault-tolerant cloud-native systems using technologies like Kubernetes , Golang , and major cloud providers.

• Own the end-to-end operational lifecycle, from proactive monitoring and alerting to incident response and blameless post-mortems, ensuring continuous service improvement.

• Drive developer delight and operational efficiency through automation, self-service tooling, and streamlined workflows for deploying and managing API gateways, while proactively preventing technical debt and reducing operational toil.

• Define, track, and report on key SLOs and SLIs , and advocate for architectural best practices that keep Managed Gateways performant and resilient as it scales.

• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, engineering, and support teams to influence roadmap decisions and ensure operational readiness for new features.

What You'll Bring

The Toolkit

• Proven experience leading and managing Site Reliability Engineering or DevOps teams in a fast-paced, high-growth environment.

• Deep expertise in designing, deploying, and operating highly available distributed systems on cloud platforms ( AWS , Azure , or GCP ).

• Extensive hands-on experience with Kubernetes (k8s) and container orchestration in production environments.

• Proficiency in Golang or similar modern programming languages for infrastructure automation and service development.

• Strong understanding of observability principles and experience with tools such as Prometheus , Grafana , OpenTelemetry , or similar.

• Demonstrated ability to manage critical incidents, perform root cause analysis, and implement effective preventative measures.

• Familiarity with API gateway technologies, service mesh, or network proxies is a significant plus.

The Kong DNA

• Ownership: You take full responsibility for the reliability and performance of systems, driving initiatives from conception to completion.

• Urgency: You thrive in dynamic environments, prioritizing critical issues and delivering impactful solutions with speed and precision.

• Collaboration: You build strong relationships, foster open communication, and work effectively across global teams to achieve shared goals.

Bonus Points

• Experience with open-source contributions or active participation in SRE/cloud-native communities.

• Certifications in cloud platforms (e.g., AWS Certified DevOps Engineer ) or Kubernetes (e.g., CKA , CKAD ).

• Background in companies focused on developer tools, infrastructure software, or API management.