Staff Product Designer (Dev Portal)

📍 Job Overview

Job Title: Staff Product Designer (Dev Portal)

Company: Kong

Location: United States (Remote)

Job Type: FULL_TIME

Category: Product Design / Developer Experience

Date Posted: May 13, 2026

Experience Level: Mid to Senior Level (6+ years)

Remote Status: Fully Remote (Canada & United States)

🚀 Role Summary

• Lead the end-to-end design process for complex, developer-facing products within Kong's API and AI management platform.

• Champion customer needs and translate them into exceptional user experiences by leveraging user research, data analysis, and systems thinking.

• Drive product strategy and execution by collaborating closely with product management, engineering, and other cross-functional teams.

• Elevate the design team's practices and mentor junior designers to foster a culture of continuous improvement and high-quality design output.

• Contribute significantly to the evolution of Kong's Developer Portal and related technical products.

📝 Enhancement Note: This role is positioned as a Staff Product Designer, indicating a need for significant autonomy, strategic influence, and the ability to mentor. The focus on a "Dev Portal" and "developer-facing products" strongly suggests a deep understanding of User Experience (UX) for technical audiences, API management concepts, and potentially AI workflow design. The emphasis on metrics, instrumentation, and experimentation points towards a data-driven design approach, common in SaaS and B2B environments.

📈 Primary Responsibilities

• Lead complex design projects from initial concept through to final UI delivery, ensuring alignment with overall product strategy and design system standards.

• Conduct user research, synthesize findings, and translate customer insights into actionable design solutions that address Jobs-To-Be-Done.

• Apply systems thinking to identify opportunities for improving the overall product cohesion, usability, and user experience across different areas.

• Make data-informed design decisions by analyzing user behavior metrics, instrumentation data, and conducting A/B tests.

• Develop and advocate for design solutions by clearly communicating customer needs, business impact, trade-offs, and rationale to stakeholders.

• Proactively educate cross-functional teams on effective design collaboration practices and best ways to integrate design into the product development lifecycle.

• Take ownership of design initiatives, clearly communicate priorities, progress, risks, and timeline changes to relevant parties.

• Mentor and guide junior designers, role-modeling best practices, providing constructive feedback, and fostering their professional growth.

• Contribute to and help evolve the team's design processes, standards, and shared design system.

• Design for complex technical concepts, intricate workflows, and system constraints inherent in API and AI management platforms.

📝 Enhancement Note: The responsibilities highlight a senior-level individual contributor role with significant leadership and mentorship expectations. The emphasis on "systems thinking," "data-informed design decisions," and "developer experiences" are critical keywords for operations and product professionals. The expectation to "educate people outside of the design team" signifies a need for strong influence and communication skills beyond just design execution.

🎓 Skills & Qualifications

Education: While no specific degree is mandated, a Bachelor's or Master's degree in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Design, Computer Science, or a related field is often preferred for senior design roles. Equivalent practical experience will also be considered.

Experience:

• Minimum of 6+ years of professional experience in product design, with a strong preference for experience in developer tool SaaS products or similar complex B2B environments.

Required Skills:

• Expertise in User Research methodologies (qualitative and quantitative) to deeply understand customer needs and workflows.

• Proficient in User Interface (UI) design, visual design principles, and creating high-fidelity mockups and prototypes.

• Strong Systems Thinking capabilities to design cohesive and scalable product experiences.

• Experience designing for Developer Experiences (DX), including complex technical workflows and system constraints.

• Ability to make Data-Informed Design decisions by utilizing metrics, instrumentation, and experimentation.

• Excellent Storytelling and communication skills (written and verbal) to articulate design rationale and influence stakeholders.

• Experience working with and contributing to shared Design Systems and team processes.

• Proficiency in a variety of design and prototyping tools (e.g., Figma, Sketch, Adobe Creative Suite).

• Demonstrated ability to champion customer needs and advocate for user-centric design.

Preferred Skills:

• Experience with API management platforms, microservices architecture, or AI/ML platforms.

• Familiarity with Kong's product suite (e.g., Kong Gateway, Kong Konnect).

• Experience in contributing to or defining design processes and team standards.

• Understanding of technical concepts related to cloud-native technologies, DevOps, and security.

• Experience with Jobs-To-Be-Done (JTBD) framework.

📝 Enhancement Note: The explicit requirement for a portfolio demonstrating specific design phases and outcomes is crucial. The emphasis on "developer experiences" and "complex workflows" within a "SaaS product" context is a strong indicator of the type of technical rigor expected. The "data-informed" and "metrics" aspect suggests a need for analytical thinking beyond typical UI design.

📊 Process & Systems Portfolio Requirements

Portfolio Essentials:

• Showcase end-to-end design leadership, detailing your process from problem definition to final delivery for complex projects.

• Include specific examples of user research conducted, highlighting how insights informed design decisions.

• Present case studies demonstrating how your designs positively impacted customers and improved key business metrics (e.g., adoption, retention, conversion).

• Articulate your communication and storytelling skills through well-structured case studies and explanations.

• Provide examples of your interaction with and contribution to design systems and team processes.

• Include examples of pixel-perfect, aesthetically pleasing final UI designs.

Process Documentation:

• Your portfolio should implicitly or explicitly document your approach to:

  • Leading collaborative design processes from definition through to delivery.

  • Conducting independent user research.

  • Utilizing data to inform design decisions.

  • Measuring and demonstrating the impact of your design work on customers and business outcomes.

  • Communicating design rationale and strategy effectively.

  • Contributing to and leveraging design systems.

📝 Enhancement Note: The portfolio requirements are highly specific and focused on demonstrating impact and process. Candidates must be prepared to articulate not just what they designed, but how they arrived at the solution, why it was effective, and what the measurable outcomes were, particularly in a technical SaaS context.

💵 Compensation & Benefits

Salary Range: $138,000 - $215,000 USD per year.

Benefits:

• Equity participation (Stock Options)

• Performance-based Bonus

• Comprehensive Healthcare benefits (Medical, Dental, Vision)

• 401(k) plan with company matching

• Short-term disability benefits

• Long-term disability benefits

• Basic life insurance

• Accidental Death & Dismemberment (AD&D) insurance

Working Hours: Standard full-time hours (approximately 40 hours per week), with flexibility expected for a remote role and potential cross-functional collaboration across different time zones.

📝 Enhancement Note: The salary range provided is competitive for a Staff Product Designer role in the US, especially for a remote position with significant responsibilities in a growing tech company. The benefits package is robust, typical for a well-funded SaaS company. The "40 hours per week" is a baseline, but remote roles often imply a need for flexibility to accommodate global teams and urgent project needs.

🎯 Team & Company Context

🏢 Company Culture

Industry: API & AI Connectivity Technologies / Software Infrastructure / SaaS. Kong operates in a critical, high-growth sector that underpins modern digital services and the emerging agentic era.

Company Size: Kong is a well-established, fast-growing, and well-funded company. Based on its description and typical hiring patterns, it's likely in the scale-up phase, with several hundred to over a thousand employees. This size offers opportunities for impact while having established processes.

Founded: Kong was founded in 2010, indicating a mature company with a proven product and market presence, now focused on scaling and innovation in the evolving API and AI landscape.

Team Structure:

• The design team is likely integrated within product development pods, working closely with Product Managers and Engineers.

• As a Staff Designer, you would be a senior individual contributor, potentially leading design for specific product areas or strategic initiatives.

• There is an explicit mention of mentoring junior designers, suggesting a growing team where senior members contribute to talent development.

Methodology:

• Data-driven decision-making using metrics, instrumentation, and experimentation is a core methodology.

• A focus on customer needs and Jobs-To-Be-Done guides product development.

• Systems thinking is encouraged to ensure product cohesion and scalability.

• Agile development methodologies are likely employed, requiring close collaboration between design, product, and engineering.

Company Website: https://konghq.com/

📝 Enhancement Note: Kong's focus on API and AI management positions it at the forefront of technology infrastructure. A "Staff Product Designer" role within such a company implies a need for technical acumen and an understanding of complex B2B/developer workflows. The company's growth stage suggests a dynamic environment with opportunities for significant individual contribution and process improvement.

📈 Career & Growth Analysis

Operations Career Level: This is a "Staff" level role, which is typically a senior individual contributor position. It signifies a high degree of autonomy, expertise, and the ability to influence product strategy and team practices. It sits above "Senior Product Designer" and often below "Principal Product Designer" or "Design Lead/Manager."

Reporting Structure: The Staff Product Designer will likely report to a Design Manager or Director of Product Design. They will work closely with Product Managers and Engineering Leads within their assigned product area.

Operations Impact: The role has a direct impact on the usability and effectiveness of Kong's developer-facing products, including the Developer Portal. Success in this role contributes to customer adoption, satisfaction, and retention, which directly influences revenue and market position. By designing exceptional experiences, the Staff Designer helps Kong acquire and retain developers, a critical user base for their platform.

Growth Opportunities:

• Skill Specialization: Deepen expertise in specific areas like API design, AI product design, or advanced developer experience strategies.

• Leadership Development: Progress to Principal Product Designer, leading design strategy for larger product areas, or transition into management roles by mentoring and leading design teams.

• Strategic Influence: Take on more significant product strategy roles, influencing the roadmap and long-term vision for Kong's platform.

• Industry Expertise: Become a recognized expert in developer experience design within the API and AI management space.

• Cross-functional Leadership: Lead design initiatives that span multiple product teams or contribute to defining company-wide design standards and practices.

📝 Enhancement Note: The "Staff" title suggests a path for growth into principal-level individual contributor roles or management. The emphasis on mentoring indicates an opportunity to develop leadership skills early on. The role's strategic nature means growth can also be measured by increased influence on product direction and company-wide design practices.

🌐 Work Environment

Office Type: This is a fully remote position, allowing employees to work from their home office. The company may offer co-working stipends or occasional in-person meetups for team alignment.

Office Location(s): Remote within Canada and the United States. Specific time zone requirements may exist to facilitate collaboration.

Workspace Context:

• Collaborative Environment: Expect a highly collaborative remote environment, relying heavily on digital tools for communication, design, and project management.

• Operations Tools & Technology: Access to industry-standard design tools (Figma, Sketch), collaboration platforms (Slack, Zoom, Jira), and potentially internal documentation wikis.

• Team Interaction: Regular virtual stand-ups, design critiques, brainstorming sessions, and stakeholder reviews are expected to maintain connection and alignment within distributed teams.

Work Schedule: While the core expectation is around 40 hours per week, the remote nature and global customer base may require some flexibility in working hours to accommodate meetings across different time zones and ensure timely responses to urgent issues.

📝 Enhancement Note: As a remote role, the emphasis is on asynchronous and synchronous communication via digital platforms. The ability to self-manage, maintain productivity, and collaborate effectively in a virtual setting is paramount. The company is likely to provide necessary software and potentially stipends for home office setup.

📄 Application & Portfolio Review Process

Interview Process:

• Initial Screening: A brief call with a recruiter to assess basic qualifications, cultural fit, and interest.

• Portfolio Review & Design Challenge: A session where candidates present their portfolio, discussing specific projects, their process, and impact. This may be followed by a take-home design challenge or an in-person/virtual design exercise focused on a specific problem related to the Dev Portal or developer experience.

• Hiring Manager Interview: A more in-depth discussion with the hiring manager about experience, leadership, mentorship capabilities, and strategic thinking.

• Cross-functional Interviews: Meetings with Product Managers, Engineers, and potentially other designers to assess collaboration style, technical understanding, and team fit.

• Final Interview: Potentially with a senior leader (e.g., Head of Product, Head of Design) to finalize the decision.

Portfolio Review Tips:

• Focus on Impact: Clearly articulate the problem, your role, your process, the solutions you designed, and most importantly, the measurable impact on users and business metrics. Use quantifiable data whenever possible.

• Showcase Process: Detail your design thinking, user research methods, problem-solving approaches, and how you iterated based on feedback and data.

• Highlight Collaboration: Demonstrate how you worked effectively with product managers, engineers, and other stakeholders.

• Tailor to Kong: Emphasize projects relevant to developer tools, SaaS, complex workflows, and data-informed design. Show your understanding of API management and developer portals.

• Storytelling: Structure your portfolio presentations as compelling narratives that guide the interviewer through your thought process and decision-making.

• Design System & UI: Include examples of high-fidelity UI and discuss your experience with design systems.

Challenge Preparation:

• Understand the Domain: Research Kong, its products (especially Kong Konnect and the Developer Portal), its target audience (developers, DevOps, IT professionals), and the API management/AI connectivity landscape.

• Practice Problem Solving: Be prepared to tackle design problems related to complex technical interfaces, data visualization, workflow optimization, and user onboarding for technical users.

• Articulate Trade-offs: Demonstrate an understanding of technical constraints, business goals, and user needs, and how you balance them.

• Present Clearly: Practice presenting your design process and solutions concisely and persuasively, focusing on rationale and impact.

📝 Enhancement Note: The interview process emphasizes not just design skills but also strategic thinking, communication, collaboration, and mentorship. The portfolio is the primary tool for demonstrating these capabilities, so candidates must curate it thoughtfully and be prepared to discuss it in detail, linking it back to Kong's specific needs.

🛠 Tools & Technology Stack

Primary Tools:

• Design & Prototyping: Figma (highly probable, industry standard), Sketch, Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, Photoshop).

• Collaboration & Project Management: Slack, Zoom, Jira, Confluence, Asana, Trello (or similar).

• User Research Platforms: UserTesting.com, Maze, Lookback, or internal tools for conducting remote research.

Analytics & Reporting:

• Product Analytics: Mixpanel, Amplitude, Google Analytics, or internal data dashboards.

• A/B Testing Platforms: Optimizely, VWO, or internal experimentation frameworks.

• Data Visualization Tools: Tableau, Looker, Power BI (or internal dashboards) for analyzing user data and reporting on design impact.

CRM & Automation:

• While less direct for a designer, familiarity with CRM concepts (e.g., Salesforce) and marketing automation platforms can provide context for B2B SaaS products.

• Understanding of API concepts and potentially tools like Postman for testing and understanding API interactions.

📝 Enhancement Note: Proficiency in modern design tools like Figma is almost a given. The emphasis on "metrics, instrumentation, and experimentation" suggests that familiarity with product analytics and A/B testing platforms is highly desirable, as designers will be expected to use data to inform and validate their work.

👥 Team Culture & Values

Operations Values:

• Customer Centricity: Deeply understanding and prioritizing customer needs, particularly developers, to build valuable solutions.

• Collaboration: Working effectively across product, engineering, and other teams to achieve shared goals.

• Data-Driven Approach: Using data and metrics to inform decisions, measure impact, and drive continuous improvement.

• Excellence & Craftsmanship: Striving for high-quality design, attention to detail, and pixel-perfect execution.

• Innovation: Embracing new technologies and approaches to solve complex problems in the evolving API and AI landscape.

• Ownership & Accountability: Taking responsibility for design outcomes and proactively driving initiatives forward.

Collaboration Style:

• Partnership: Design works in close partnership with Product Management and Engineering to define and build products.

• Open Communication: Encouraging honest feedback, constructive criticism, and transparent dialogue.

• Systems Thinking: Collaborating to ensure consistency and coherence across the entire product ecosystem.

• Mentorship Culture: Senior members actively support and develop junior team members.

📝 Enhancement Note: Kong's culture appears to value technical excellence, customer focus, and collaborative problem-solving. For a designer, this means being comfortable with technical concepts, data, and working closely with engineering and product teams in a fast-paced, remote environment.

⚡ Challenges & Growth Opportunities

Challenges:

• Designing for Technical Users: Creating intuitive and efficient experiences for a sophisticated developer audience with specific technical needs and expectations.

• Complexity of API/AI Management: Navigating the intricate concepts and workflows involved in managing APIs and AI models at scale.

• Balancing Stakeholder Needs: Aligning diverse perspectives from product, engineering, sales, and customers to create unified design solutions.

• Remote Collaboration: Maintaining strong team cohesion, clear communication, and effective collaboration in a fully remote setting.

• Pace of Innovation: Keeping up with rapid advancements in API, AI, and cloud-native technologies to ensure Kong's platform remains cutting-edge.

Learning & Development Opportunities:

• Deep Dive into API & AI: Gain extensive knowledge of API management, microservices, and AI/ML technologies.

• Advanced Design Techniques: Master complex UX patterns for developer tools, data visualization, and workflow automation.

• Strategic Product Input: Influence product roadmaps and contribute to the strategic direction of Kong's platform.

• Mentorship & Leadership: Develop leadership skills by mentoring junior designers and potentially leading design initiatives.

• Industry Engagement: Participate in industry conferences, webinars, and communities related to API, AI, and developer experience.

📝 Enhancement Note: The challenges are inherent to working with complex technical products. The growth opportunities are significant, offering a chance to become a subject matter expert in a rapidly evolving field and develop strong leadership capabilities.

💡 Interview Preparation

Strategy Questions:

• "Describe a time you led the design of a complex, developer-facing product from concept to launch. What were the biggest challenges, and how did you overcome them?" (Focus on process, collaboration, and impact.)

• "How do you approach understanding the 'Jobs-To-Be-Done' for technical users, and how do you translate that into actionable design solutions?" (Highlight research methods and user empathy.)

• "Walk us through a project where you used data and metrics to inform your design decisions or measure the success of your design. What was the outcome?" (Emphasize data-driven approach and ROI.)

• "How do you ensure consistency and cohesion across a product ecosystem, especially when working with a design system?" (Showcase systems thinking and design system experience.)

Company & Culture Questions:

• "What interests you about Kong and our mission to build the future of API and AI connectivity?" (Research Kong's mission, products, and recent news.)

• "How do you stay updated on trends in developer experience, API management, and AI?" (Show passion for the domain.)

• "How do you approach collaboration with product managers and engineers who may have different priorities or perspectives?" (Highlight communication and negotiation skills.)

Portfolio Presentation Strategy:

• Structure Your Narrative: For each case study, clearly define the problem, your role, the scope, your process, the solution, and the measurable impact.

• Quantify Impact: Use numbers, metrics, and data to demonstrate the success of your designs – e.g., "Increased user adoption by X%," "Reduced task completion time by Y seconds," "Improved customer satisfaction scores by Z points."

• Show, Don't Just Tell: Use visuals effectively – wireframes, user flows, mockups, prototypes, and final UI. Explain your design choices at each stage.

• Be Prepared for Deep Dives: Anticipate questions about specific decisions, trade-offs made, challenges encountered, and alternative solutions considered.

• Practice Your Delivery: Rehearse your presentation to ensure it's concise, engaging, and within any time limits. Be comfortable answering questions on the fly.

📝 Enhancement Note: Preparation should focus on demonstrating strategic thinking, deep understanding of developer experience design, data-informed decision-making, and strong collaboration skills. Candidates should be ready to articulate the "why" behind their design choices and their impact.

📌 Application Steps

To apply for this Staff Product Designer position:

• Submit your application through the provided link on Ashby.

• Curate Your Portfolio: Ensure your portfolio prominently features case studies demonstrating end-to-end design leadership, user research, data-informed decision-making, and measurable impact on developer-facing products. Tailor it to highlight experiences relevant to API management and developer portals.

• Optimize Your Resume: Highlight your 6+ years of experience, specific accomplishments in SaaS/developer tools, and keywords related to UX, UI, user research, data analysis, and mentorship.

• Prepare Your Narrative: Practice presenting your portfolio case studies, focusing on clear storytelling, articulating your process, and quantifying the impact of your design work. Be ready to discuss your approach to complex technical design challenges.

• Research Kong: Familiarize yourself with Kong's products (especially Kong Konnect and the Developer Portal), its mission, its target audience, and the competitive landscape of API and AI management.

⚠️ Important Notice: This enhanced job description includes AI-generated insights and operations industry-standard assumptions. All details should be verified directly with the hiring organization before making application decisions.

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