Senior Security Engineer (Security Champion), Runtimes

About the Role:

At Kong, our API and AI Gateway sits at the center of how Fortune 500 enterprises and AI-native startups secure and govern the flow of intelligence.

Every request into a company's infrastructure goes through the Gateway first. Security isn't a side concern here, it's the top priority: you're guarding the front door.

You'll be securing AI traffic while the playbook is still being written: prompt injection, agentic authorization, MCP. These are problems nobody has fully solved yet.

We're looking for a Software Engineer with a security specialization to join our Runtimes team as a Security Champion: an engineer who writes real code and makes security a built-in part of how we ship.

What You'll Do:

• Run security-focused code audits, threat modeling, and secure design reviews across our AI Gateway and API Gateway capabilities
• Own vulnerability management end-to-end: triage, reproduction, remediation, verification
• Partner with AI Gateway engineering on emerging AI/LLM threat patterns (ie: prompt injection, data leakage, model abuse)
• Coach engineers on secure coding practices, turning security findings into lasting team habits
• Contribute hands-on to Gateway feature work, with security built-in from day one

What You'll Bring:

• 3+ years building production software, with 2+ years in a dedicated security role (AppSec, vulnerability research, or pentesting);
• Solid coding skills in a object oriented language (Rust, Java, Python, Go, or similar);
• Practical threat-modeling experience;
• Working knowledge of cybersecurity (especially L7 security and authentication);
• Basic knowledge of AI attack vectors.

Nice-to-have:

• Familiarity with L7 proxies/API gateway architecture (Nginx, OpenResty, Envoy, HAProxy or Kong);
• Experience with Lua;
• Open-source contributions;
• Willingness to learn Rust is important for where our platform is heading: we'll help you get there.

What we offer:

• A permanent contract under the CCNL Commercio (Quadro)
• Bonus and welfare system
• Hybrid work from our Milan Hub at Talent Garden Isola, and a seat at the table where security decisions actually shape what millions of API calls run through every day.

#LI-EA1