# Staff Product Manager, AI Management at Kong

Staff Product Manager, AI Management at Kong in San Francisco, California, United States. On-site, full-time, paying $175k–$210k. Posted October 9, 2026.

- Company: Kong
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Workplace: On-site
- Job type: Full-time
- Pay: $175k–$210k
- Experience: 7+ years
- Posted: 2026-10-09
- Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/kong/72375328-ae8e-4090-9fd3-3580878751e2/application
- Source: https://jobmagic.ai/jobs/staff-product-manager-ai-management-kong-sp931a

## Requirements

- 7-10 years of technical product management experience owning and shipping technical products in developer tools, API platforms, or AI infrastructure.
- Demonstrated ability to translate complex technical challenges—such as Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, request routing, data plane architectures, and transport trade-offs—into actionable product requirements.
- Proven track record driving execution and managing dependencies across globally distributed R&D teams.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills to articulate technical strategy across multiple functions and seniority levels.
- Deep project management instincts to track work, surface blockers early, and keep cross-functional roadmaps on schedule.

## Description

**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.

### **The Mission:**

At Kong, we are building the future of AI connectivity, empowering developers to connect, secure, govern, and scale their AI applications with speed and intelligence. As a Staff Product Manager for AI Management, you will own the product direction for our fastest-growing agentic AI portfolio—including our flagship AI Gateway—serving as a critical strategic lever in the Agentic Era. You will bridge high-impact technical innovation with enterprise runtime governance, context management, and developer platform experience to turn APIs and AI connectivity into an organizational innovation factory.

### **What You’ll Do:**

- Architect and execute the product vision and roadmap for AI Management modules, driving core capabilities around agentic harnesses, LLM routing, policies, context, guardrails, and evaluation.

- Lead cross-departmental strategy as a multiplier across engineering, design, product marketing, and executive leadership to align shared roadmaps without operational friction.

- Own the full lifecycle of your product modules by writing precise specs, prioritizing backlogs, and balancing new feature delivery against technical debt and platform dependencies.

- Drive cross-product work connecting AI Management to Kong’s core platform infrastructure, enabling seamless data plane and control plane integration.

- Speed up the clock on high-velocity delivery cadences in close partnership with engineering leads to scope work, navigate trade-offs, and accelerate time to market.

- Support regional field activities, customer-facing technical engagements, and sales enablement to validate product-market fit and ensure developer delight.

### **What You’ll Bring:**

- 7-10 years of technical product management experience owning and shipping technical products in developer tools, API platforms, or AI infrastructure.

- Demonstrated ability to translate complex technical challenges—such as Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, request routing, data plane architectures, and transport trade-offs—into actionable product requirements.

- Proven track record driving execution and managing dependencies across globally distributed R&D teams.

- Strong written and verbal communication skills to articulate technical strategy across multiple functions and seniority levels.

- Deep project management instincts to track work, surface blockers early, and keep cross-functional roadmaps on schedule.

### **The Kong DNA:**

- Ownership: You act as a driver, not a passenger, holding yourself accountable for product outcomes, runtime performance, and customer success.

- Urgency: You model speed and efficiency in everything you do, navigating the fast-paced pre-IPO landscape with grit and focus.

- Collaboration: You lead like an API by working cross-functionally, breaking down silos, and building alignment across global teams.

### **Bonus Points:**

- Direct experience with agentic AI development, including AI agents, AI gateways, LLM routing, AI observability, prompt management, guardrails, MCP servers, and A2A communications.

- Familiarity with enterprise platform engineering, Kubernetes, cloud-native architectures, control planes, and data planes.

#LI-MP1

**About Kong:**
Kong Inc., the AI Connectivity Company, is building the connectivity layer of AI. Trusted by the Fortune 500® and AI-native startups alike, Kong’s unified API and AI platform enables organizations to secure, manage, accelerate, govern, and monetize the flow of intelligence across APIs and AI traffic — on any model, any cloud. For more information, visit www.konghq.com.