It’s important to know what kinds of questions you might be asked at a job interview. That way, you can prepare your answers ahead of time and be sure of them when the pressure is on.
To make sure your next interview in Hong Kong goes well, our expert recruitment consultants have put together a list of the most important questions and answers you need to know.
Landing a job at Kong a leading API management platform is a coveted opportunity for any software engineer or technical professional. Kong is well-known for its innovative products like Kong Gateway and its thriving dev-first culture. Competition for roles at Kong is therefore quite high.
To stand out from the crowd and ace your Kong interview, it’s essential to come prepared for the types of questions you’re likely to encounter This comprehensive guide outlines the 25 most common Kong interview questions, providing tips and sample responses to help you highlight your skills and experience confidently
Overview of Kong’s Interview Process
The standard interview process at Kong consists of three stages:
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Initial Screening Call (30 mins) – A preliminary call with a recruiter to evaluate basic fit for the role.
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Technical Interview (60 mins) – A live coding challenge and system design questions assessed by potential teammates.
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Executive Interview (60 mins) – A discussion focused on cultural fit and alignment with Kong’s core values.
Some tips for acing each stage:
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Research the role and Kong’s technologies so you can intelligently discuss your relevant experience.
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For coding challenges, verbally communicate your approach before writing actual code.
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Be prepared with questions that demonstrate your interest in Kong and desire to join the team.
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Highlight how your values and passion align with Kong’s transparent, innovative culture.
With preparation using this guide, you’ll demonstrate the perfect blend of skills, cultural fit and enthusiasm needed to impress your future colleagues at Kong.
25 Common Kong Interview Questions and Answers
Here are the top 25 questions frequently asked at Kong interviews with tips for crafting winning responses:
Technical Questions
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How would you design a scalable API gateway for a large e-commerce platform?
Discuss considerations like high availability, horizontal scaling, caching, and asynchronous processing. Highlight experience with technologies like Nginx, Docker, service discovery patterns. Demonstrate capacity to handle complex distributed systems.
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Explain how you would implement canary releases or A/B testing using Kong.
Outline using request routing, traffic splitting, and weighted upstream patterns in Kong to direct subsets of traffic for testing. Reference Kong features like health checks and circuit breaking for reliability. Showcase domain expertise.
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What are some strategies to debug issues for a Kong deployment running in Kubernetes?
Discuss using metrics, logging, and tracing to pinpoint failures. Mention tools like kubectl, Kiali, Jaeger, Prometheus. Demonstrate Kubernetes and observability expertise. Emphasize systematic, proactive monitoring.
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How would you optimize Kong Gateway for production workloads?
Cover tuning Nginx configs, enabling caching, limiting plugins, isolating traffic, scaling nodes. Highlight production deployment experience, capacity planning, and performance benchmarking skills.
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What are your favorite Kong plugins and how have you used them?
Choose relevant plugins like Rate Limiting, JWT Auth, OAuth2, etc. Discuss use cases that highlight your hands-on experience with real implementations. Demonstrate domain knowledge.
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How does Kong handle traffic between multiple datacenters or regions?
Explain Kong Global Traffic Control for routing traffic intelligently based on latency, geo-policy, etc. Highlight multi-region deployment experience. Discuss disaster recovery strategies.
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How does Kong integrate with CI/CD pipelines and Git workflows?
Reference Kong for Kubernetes with GitOps workflows via controllers. Also discuss using Kong’s automation tools like decK, PDK, etc. Showcase DevOps fluency.
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How can you secure the Admin API in Kong Enterprise?
Discuss role-based access, TLS, firewall rules, IP restrictions, etc. Demonstrate security best practices for API and microservices. Highlight exposure to Kong Enterprise-level features.
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What factors influence your choice between Docker Swarm and Kubernetes for container orchestration?
Compare architectures, features, and learning curves. Highlight considerations like environment complexity, team skills, hybrid cloud needs, etc. Demonstrate experience with both tools.
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What are some challenges with monolithic vs. microservices architecture?
Contrast complexity, scalability, release cadence, observability needs, etc. Discuss tradeoffs and when each approach makes sense. Show broad systems design perspective.
Behavioral Questions
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Tell me about a time you influenced a team by leveraging your technical knowledge.
Share a story highlighting soft skills like communication, emotional intelligence and leadership. Demonstrate ability to guide teams through complex technical challenges.
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Describe a situation where you had to collaborate cross-functionally to resolve a critical production issue.
Emphasize stakeholder coordination, continuous communication, systematic debugging, and creative problem solving. Explain how you maintained calm and led resolution.
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Talk about a time you had to balance perfectionism with pragmatism.
Discuss recognizing when tradeoffs are needed to move forward and deliver. Highlight alignment with Kong’s bias for action and transparency.
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How would you navigate a situation where a technical decision you made caused issues down the road?
Focus on accountability, learning from mistakes, and balancing ego with team’s best interest. Share an example if possible.
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Tell me about a time you disagreed with teammates on a technical approach. How did you come to a resolution?
Share a story that demonstrates conflict management, open communication, and commitment to team cohesion over ego. Focus on positive outcome.
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Describe a situation where you had to quickly master a new complex technology. How did you achieve proficiency?
Discuss self-directed learning, prototyping, reaching out to experts, documentation, etc. Share specific examples. Highlight passion for continuous learning.
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Tell me about a time you mentored or coached someone technical.
Share an example highlighting skills like active listening, asking probing questions, and breaking down complex topics simply. Show ability to develop others.
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What existing skills would you like to develop further with regards to Kong’s technology?
Discuss specific Kong solutions and value-add skills like designing complex distributed systems, Kubernetes, etc. Demonstrate enthusiasm for Kong’s tech stack.
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How do you stay updated on the latest developments in cloud, APIs, microservices and related technologies?
Mention conferences, meetups, podcasts, blogs, open source contributions, side projects etc. Highlight passion for learning.
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Why do you want to work at Kong specifically versus other tech companies?
Show deep understanding of Kong’s products and culture. Share why Kong’s transparent and innovative work environment appeals specifically to your values. Demonstrate domain enthusiasm.
Behavioral Questions
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Tell me about yourself.
Share professionally relevant background and achievements. Highlight overlap with role’s required skills and passion for Kong’s mission. Keep to under 2 mins.
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What are your greatest strengths?
Discuss 2-3 relevant strengths backed by examples – e.g. problem-solving, communication, learning ability. Align with role requirements.
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What is your greatest weakness?
Share a non-critical weakness and discuss actively improving it. E.g. Attention to detail, public speaking. Highlight self-awareness.
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Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
Share goals aligned with role and company trajectory. E.g. Leading projects using expertise in Kong’s latest innovations, mentoring new hires, etc.
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Do you have any questions for us?
Ask insightful questions that demonstrate your deep understanding of Kong’s products, culture and tech stack. Highlight domain enthusiasm.
How to Prepare for the Kong Interview
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Thoroughly research Kong’s solutions, customers, and competition. Understand their architecture and technical concepts.
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Study Kong’s blog, documentation, guides and open source code to build hands-on experience if possible.
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Practice mock interviews focused on Kong’s domain. Get feedback from colleagues.
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Prepare insightful questions that show your engagement with Kong’s mission and culture.
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Review common behavioral and situational interview questions. Have stories ready that highlight relevant skills.
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Prepare for technical questions that blend system design, architecture, troubleshooting and hands-on knowledge.
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Rest well the day before your interview. Confidence and energy are key.
With diligent preparation using these tips and sample responses, you’ll demonstrate your strategic thinking, technical proficiency and cultural alignment – the perfect recipe for landing your dream job at Kong!
What attracted you to our company?
This is your opportunity to demonstrate that you’ve done your research. Read as much as you can about the company before the interview. This includes their website, social media pages, news stories, and forums.
Find out what about the company’s mission and values stands out to you and how that fits with the career path you want and the values you hold dear.
What are your weaknesses?
Take the time to craft an answer that isn’t a cliché. Nothing makes a hiring manager cringe more than the answer: “I’m a perfectionist. ”.
This is your opportunity to demonstrate your own self-awareness and desire for personal development. Try to identify something that isn’t critical to the role, and frame your answer in the positive.
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FAQ
What are the best answers for interviews?
What questions are asked at the Zip World interview?
What questions are asked at the builder IO interview?
What authentication methods does Kong support?
Kong supports multiple authentication methods, including Basic Auth, JWT, and OAuth 2.0. Basic Auth is the simplest form of authentication, and works by sending a username and password with each request. JWT works by sending a signed JSON token with each request.
What questions were asked during the interview process?
In summary, while there were some textbook questions about certain scenarios, the interview process as a whole was quite a natural conversation. There were plenty of opportunities to ask questions about day-to-day work, leadership, how the company handles certain things, culture, transparency, and so forth.
Which is better Nginx or Kong?
There is no definitive answer to this question as it depends on a number of factors, including the specific use case. Generally speaking, Nginx is considered to be more lightweight and efficient, while Kong is more feature-rich and scalable. 20.
How do you answer a job interview question?
Hiring managers pose this question to gauge your enthusiasm and understanding of the company and role. To respond effectively, highlight specific aspects of the company and job that attracted you. Then, connect your strengths and achievements to the role’s requirements.
