Staff Software Engineer, Identity and Access Management

About this role

Are you ready to power the World's connections?

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.

About the role:
Kong is building the future of API management for developers. We’re a fast-growing, well-funded company with happy customers and motivated employees. Insomnia, acquired in 2019, is a full-lifecycle API development platform that has quickly become an integral part of Kong’s product portfolio.
As a Staff Software Engineer on the Konnect team at Kong, you’ll architect Kong Identity's multi-tenant identity platform supporting complex organizational hierarchies, cross-tenant isolation, and enterprise-grade security controls.

What you'll do:

• Design and implement advanced token management systems, including refresh token rotation, proof-of-possession tokens, and custom token introspection with real-time revocation capabilities.
• Lead development of Kong Identity's extensible claims engine supporting dynamic attribute resolution, contextual claim injection, and complex business logic evaluation at token issuance.
• Architect global identity infrastructure with edge optimization, intelligent token caching, and cross-region replication strategies for sub-millisecond authentication latency worldwide.
• Design sophisticated rate limiting, anomaly detection, and fraud prevention systems to protect against credential stuffing, token abuse, and distributed attacks.
• Build enterprise identity federation capabilities, including SAML bridge patterns, external IdP chaining, and custom protocol adapters for legacy system integration.
• Lead technical strategy for Kong Identity's developer experience, including SDKs, webhooks, audit logging, and real-time analytics dashboards for token lifecycle visibility.
• Architect advanced client management sys...