Great Place To Work runs a survey called the Trust Index™. It includes 60 statements and two open-ended questions, answered directly by employees. The survey measures five things: credibility and honesty from leadership, respect, fairness, pride in the work, and a sense of belonging. Companies don’t write their own review. Employees do.

To earn the certification, roughly 7 in 10 employees need to report a consistently positive experience. Kong cleared that bar at 95%.

The numbers give a pretty clear picture of how people experience working at Kong:

• - 97% say they’re able to take time off when they think it’s necessary
• - 97% say they were made to feel welcome when they joined the company
• - 94% say management is honest and ethical in its business practices
• - 94% say they can be themselves at work
• - 93% say they feel they make a difference

This isn’t a one-off. Kong has now earned Great Place To Work Certification™ four times. This year, we were also named to Fortune’s [_Best Workplaces in the Bay Area_](https://konghq.com/blog/news/kong-fortune-best-workplaces-bay-area)_Best Workplaces in the Bay Area_™ 2026 list, where we ranked #30 in the small and medium category.

Kong has grown while we’ve done this. The company now has 332 U.S.-based employees as part of a global team headquartered in San Francisco. Keeping a strong culture as a company grows isn’t easy, which makes four certifications over time more meaningful than a single recognition.

Kong builds the layer that governs how APIs and AI traffic move, securely, reliably, and at scale. That only works if the people building it trust the system they’re operating in. An engineer who doesn’t trust their leadership isn’t going to build infrastructure other companies trust their traffic to.

At Kong, speed and governance aren’t a trade-off. Neither are growth and culture. The same discipline that goes into the platform goes into how the company treats the people building it.

The survey numbers describe how people feel. Here’s a piece of why: the work itself. The problems Kong is solving right now didn’t exist in this form a few years ago. Governing AI traffic, securing token flow, and connecting models across any cloud are all part of a category that is still taking shape.

Someone joining today isn’t maintaining a mature product category. They’re helping define one while it’s still being written. That shows up in how work actually gets done, too. Kong is still small enough that one person’s decisions don’t disappear into a chart of boxes, and things move fast because the ground underneath is moving fast too.

Gunjan Aggarwal, Kong’s Chief People Officer, shares what these numbers look like in practice and what it takes to build and maintain a culture people want to be part of.

**94% of employees say they can be themselves at work. What does Kong actually do to make that true, day to day? Not the policy, the practice?**

For us, it’s about creating an environment where people feel comfortable speaking up, asking questions, disagreeing respectfully, and bringing their own perspective to the table. We want people to feel they can have a point of view without feeling like they need to conform.

Leaders have to model that behavior, too. If people see that it’s okay to listen, change your mind, or say, "I got that wrong," they’re much more likely to do the same.

**97% say they felt welcome when they joined. Walk through what a new hire’s first two weeks actually look like.**

The first couple of weeks are about building context and relationships. There's a lot to learn at Kong, so new hires meet their teams, see how their work connects to the bigger picture, and learn who to ask when questions come up. You'll also get a new hire swag gift to kick things off.

• - Contribute early: You don't have to wait six months to have an opinion at Kong. Being new gives you a perspective the rest of us have lost, and we want it early. Every month, new hires get an AMA with members of our executive leadership team. Ask what's actually on your mind.
• - Get recognized: Good work gets seen fast. New hires get shout outs at WKU as soon as they've earned one. Each month we also call out the most creatively named API built by a new hire.
• - Wherever you work from: Many roles and teams start their first day or week together in an office. Our sales team runs in person onboarding boot camps. And on day one, every new hire, remote or not, joins a live orientation to meet that week's other new joiners.
• - Say hello: Drop into our Cheers and Celebrate channel and introduce yourself.

**Kong has grown a lot in four years. What’s the hardest part of keeping trust high as headcount scales?**

You can’t assume culture will take care of itself. As you grow, informal communication becomes harder, so you have to be much more intentional about keeping people connected and informed. It’s important that people understand what’s happening across the company, why we’re making certain decisions, and where we’re headed strategically. When people have that context, they can make better decisions and stay aligned, even as the organization gets bigger.

**What’s a piece of employee feedback, good or hard to hear, that changed something at Kong?**

As we’ve grown, employees have helped us see where processes that worked well for a smaller company were starting to create friction. That feedback isn’t always easy to hear, but it’s important. It’s reinforced that growth shouldn’t mean adding process for the sake of process. We want enough structure to help people succeed without creating unnecessary barriers to getting things done.

**What do you want a candidate reading this blog to actually understand about working here, beyond the stats?**

I’d want candidates to understand that Kong is a place for people who want to work on hard problems and have a real impact. The space we’re working in is changing quickly, and there’s still a lot to figure out.

That makes the work exciting, but it also means you need to be comfortable with ambiguity and moving quickly. At the same time, we care about how we work together. You can have high standards, move fast, and still treat people well.

If you want to help shape something that’s still being defined, Kong is a pretty special place to do that.