Who are we?
Smarsh empowers its customers to manage risk and unleash intelligence in their digital communications. Our growing community of over 6500 organizations in regulated industries counts on Smarsh every day to help them spot compliance, legal or reputational risks in 80+ communication channels before those risks become regulatory fines or headlines. Relentless innovation has fueled our journey to consistent leadership recognition from analysts like Gartner and Forrester, and our sustained, aggressive growth has landed Smarsh in the annual Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing American companies since 2008.
Position Overview
- We are seeking an experienced Senior Cloud Platform Engineer (IC4) to architect, build, and maintain our enterprise API Gateway infrastructure on AWS. This role combines deep technical expertise in Kong Gateway, cloud architecture, and DevOps practices while ensuring platform reliability, security, and operational excellence.
Core Responsibilities
- Platform Architecture (35%)
- Design and implement Kong Gateway's hybrid deployment architecture across multiple AWS regions and Kubernetes clusters
- Architect high-availability solutions ensuring business continuity and disaster recovery
- Design and implement security frameworks aligned with compliance requirements
- Create scalable multi-tenant solutions meeting enterprise requirements
- Optimize platform performance and resource utilization across environments
- Define integration patterns for microservices architectures
- Infrastructure Automation (25%)
- Develop and maintain infrastructure as code using Terraform for AWS resources
- Create and maintain Helm charts for Kubernetes deployments
- Implement GitOps workflows using ArgoCD for configuration management
- Build and maintain Concourse CI/CD pipelines for automated deployment
- Automate routine operational tasks using shell scripting
- Manage backup and recovery procedures across the platform
- Integration & Security (20%)
- Configure and maintain Kong's integration with Keycloak for authentication
- Implement and manage rate limiting solutions using Redis clusters
- Integrate Kong with service mesh technologies (Istio)
- Design and implement PKI infrastructure and certificate management
- Maintain security policies and compliance controls
- Ensure proper multi-tenant isolation and resource management
- Operations & Observability (20%)
- Design and implement monitoring solutions using Prometheus and DataDog
- Create and maintain alerting systems and dashboards
- Optimize PostgreSQL database performance for Kong's data layer
- Lead troubleshooting of complex platform issues
- Participate in on-call rotation
- Maintain operational documentation and runbooks
Required Technical Expertise
- Core Platform Knowledge
- 6+ years of experience in platform/cloud engineering
- Expert-level experience with Kong Gateway enterprise deployments
- Deep knowledge of AWS services and best practices
- Advanced understanding of Kubernetes operations
- Strong background in infrastructure automation
- Expert knowledge of network architecture and security
Technical Proficiencies
- API Gateway Development
- Kong Gateway Enterprise
- Custom plugin development
- API security patterns
- Rate limiting implementations
- Traffic control systems
- Programming & Scripting
- Lua (expert level)
- Python or Go
- Shell scripting
- SQL
- Authentication & Security
- OAuth 2.0
- OpenID Connect
- JWT
- Keycloak
- API security best practices
- Cloud & Infrastructure
- Kubernetes
- Docker
- AWS services
- Istio service mesh
- Databases & Caching
- PostgreSQL
- Redis
- Caching strategies
- DevOps & Tools
- Git
- Concourse CI
- ArgoCD
- Terraform
- Development Practices
- Test-driven development
- Continuous integration/deployment
- Code review processes
- Performance optimization
- API documentation
- Technical writing
- GitOps workflows
Professional Qualifications
- Bachelor's/Master's in Computer Science or related field
- Kong certification (if available) preferred
- Strong system design skills
- Excellence in technical communication
- Experience leading development teams
- Track record of successful API projects
Impact & Opportunity
- Lead development of critical API infrastructure
- Design next-generation API solutions
- Influence technical architecture decisions
- Drive innovation in API development
- Build scalable enterprise solutions
- Mentor and grow technical talent
- Contribute to open-source projects
About our culture
Smarsh hires lifelong learners with a passion for innovating with purpose, humility and humor. Collaboration is at the heart of everything we do. We work closely with the most popular communications platforms and the world’s leading cloud infrastructure platforms. We use the latest in AI/ML technology to help our customers break new ground at scale. We are a global organization that values diversity, and we believe that providing opportunities for everyone to be their authentic self is key to our success. Smarsh leadership, culture, and commitment to developing our people have all garnered Comparably.com Best Places to Work Awards. Come join us and find out what the best work of your career looks like.
