Sr. Kong Middleware Engineer or Kong Lead || Fort Mill, South Carolina – Onsite

Dice is the leading career destination for tech experts at every stage of their careers. Our client, Galactic Minds Inc., is seeking the following. Apply via Dice today!Role SummaryWe are looking for a Sr. Kong Middleware Engineer or Kong Lead with strong hands-on experience around API Services implementation and providing Best Practices solutions in Kong platform. Key ResponsibilitiesDesign and implement APIs using Kong Gateway (services, routes, upstreams, plugins).Provide best design patterns, security patterns and testing patterns in Kong platform. Implement API security patterns including OAuth2/OIDC, JWT, mTLS, rate limiting, and traffic controls.Deploy and operate Kong and APIs on AWS (EKS/ECS/EC2, ALB/NLB, IAM, VPC, CloudWatch).Implement CI/CD pipelines for Kong configurations services.Put guardrails around API deployment to higher environment using best practices in Kong.Recommend Kong plugins Enable monitoring, logging, and operational support for APIs and gateway components.Collaborate with architects, SRE/operations, and security teams in an onsite delivery model.Required Qualifications8+ years of software development experience with strong API/backend focus.2+ years of Kong API Gateway experience in leading the implementation.Native Kong plugin development experience using Lua/OpenResty is a plus.Experience integrating with .NET / C# applications with Kong platform.Solid understanding of API security, governance, and performance best practices.Experience deploying Kong containers and nodes on AWS cloud.Experience with Docker, Kubernetes (EKS preferred), Git, and CI/CD pipelines.Strong communication and collaboration skills.Core SkillsKong Gateway | Lua/OpenResty | AWS | API Security | CI/CD | API Design Patterns