Kong / Lua Engineer, API Gateway Hot Path

We are looking for an Kong / Lua Engineer, API Gateway Hot Path. 

This role owns that hot path. It is a specialist API gateway and low-latency systems role.
 

What This Person Will Build 

•  Kong or OpenResty plugin logic in Lua
•  Request classification for inference, training, RAG, video, compute, and edge inference APIs
• JWT/OIDC tenant identity extraction and validation
•  Redis-backed quota checks, concurrency caps, routing lookups, and request metadata
•  Low-latency connection pooling and timeout behavior
•  Gateway observability: p50/p95/p99 latency, errors, Redis latency, routing decisions, and tenant-level behavior
•  Load tests and failure tests for Redis outage, malformed tokens, quota exhaustion, and routing-table updates
   

Must-Have Background 

•  Kong plugin, OpenResty, Nginx Lua, or high-performance API gateway experience
• Strong Lua or systems scripting experience in production traffic paths
• Redis experience with connection pooling, timeouts, failover, and latency debugging
• Understanding of JWT/OIDC, API gateway routing, tenant-aware request handling, and p99 performance
• Production mindset around hot-path safety, observability, and staged rollout
• Good verbal and writing English language communication skills
   

Nice to Have 

• Experience with Kong Enterprise, Envoy/Lua, Nginx, OpenResty, API security, rate limiting, or high-throughput SaaS gateways