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.
About the role
Kong is building the future of AI connectivity, empowering developers to connect, secure, govern, and scale their AI applications with speed and intelligence. Our AI Gateway is one of Kong's most strategic and fastest-growing products, and we're growing the team to match.
We're looking for a Senior Product Manager to join the AI Gateway product team, based in our Shanghai office. You'll be the product owner for AI Gateway's data plane, as well as the infrastructural work that connects the AI Gateway data plane to Kong's broader platform, including the control plane, Kong Konnect, and Kong Operator.
You'll work in close partnership with the broader AI Gateway research & development team, with a focus on driving definition and delivery of features and cross-team product work, collaborating with engineering teams primarily in Shanghai, but also globally, while also supporting the field activities, including product marketing, sales, and enablement. This is a high-impact, hands-on product management role that reports directly to our Director of AI Products.
What You’ll Own
Runtime & Data Plane Product Ownership: Own the product direction for AI Gateway data plane, where AI-related traffic – including traffic from LLMs, MCP Servers, agents, and more – is processed, routed, and governed. You'll define requirements, write specs, prioritize the backlog, and drive delivery in close collaboration with engineering.
Cross-Product Infrastructure & Dependencies: Drive the cross-functional work that connects AI Gateway to Kong's broader platform — including dependencies on API Gateway, integration with the control plane and Kong Konnect, coordination with Kong Operator, and others. You'll navigate shared roadmaps, negotiate priorities across teams, and ensure AI Gateway's infrastructure needs aren't blocked by cross-team complexity.
Roadmap & Delivery: Own a clearly defined product roadmap for your areas, balancing new feature development against technical debt, infrastructure work, and platform dependencies. You'll partner with engineering leads to scope work, make trade-off decisions, and maintain a reliable delivery cadence.
Stakeholder Communication: Serve as the connective tissue between engineering, design, product marketing, and leadership for your areas of ownership. Keep stakeholders informed, surface risks early, and ensure alignment across time zones and teams.
Field Support: Support regional field activities as needed — such as customer-facing calls, product marketing input, or sales enablement — particularly where your proximity in Shanghai and knowledge of the runtime add value.
You’ll Thrive in This Role If You
Have 7-10 years of product management experience, with a track record of owning and shipping technical products — ideally in infrastructure, developer tools, or platform software.
Have experience driving product delivery across distributed teams — you're comfortable working across time zones, navigating dependencies between teams, and keeping things moving without having direct authority over every contributor.
Are strong at translating ambiguous technical problems into clear product requirements — you can take a messy infrastructure challenge, break it down, and turn it into a spec that engineering can execute against.
Communicate clearly and proactively, both in English and Mandarin — you'll be the bridge between Shanghai-based engineering and globally distributed stakeholders, so strong written and verbal communication in both languages is essential.
Have solid project management instincts — you may not be a full-time PM (project manager), but you know how to track work, surface blockers, and keep a roadmap on track without being asked.
Are comfortable engaging with technical depth — you don't need to write code, but you should be able to hold your own in conversations about API protocols, request routing, data plane architecture, and infrastructure trade-offs.
Bonus: Direct experience with AI-related products, including AI gateways and related infrastructure (e.g., LLM routing, AI observability, prompt management), and/or agentic AI products (e.g. MCP servers and gateways, A2A or agent gateways).
Bonus: Familiarity with data planes, control planes, Kubernetes, cloud-native architectures, and/or platform engineering workflows.
About Kong:
Kong Inc., a leading developer of API and AI connectivity technologies, is building the infrastructure that powers the agentic era. Trusted by the Fortune 500 and startups alike, Kong's unified API and AI platform, Kong Konnect, enables organizations to secure, manage, accelerate, govern, and monetize the flow of intelligence across APIs and AI models. For more information, visit www.konghq.com.
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