Strategic Internal API Platform (Kong) Product Owner

Job ID: 30598

Welcome to Group Technology, where we pride ourselves on engineering solutions and direct Nordea’s transformation by providing a holistic technological view and structured understanding of the bank, and its surrounding environment to enable the Customer Vision and the Business Strategy.

We are looking for a strategic, technically fluent, and product-focused new team member to take ownership of our internal API platform powered by Kong API Gateway.

About our team

Meet the Integration Products and Delivery team. Our role is to provide Integration Platforms for Data Streaming, Messaging, ETL and API Management. Our platforms ensure seamless connectivity between different systems and streamline data flow allowing the bank to improve operational efficiency and customer experience as well providing integration with external customers and partners. 

Our key stakeholders are in Personal Banking and Open Banking area. Team is vertically divided to support cross-platform presence. The role is based in Helsinki or Gdansk, and ideal starting month is October or earlier.

What you’ll be doing

You will serve as the bridge between platform engineering teams, enterprise architects, and API consumers across business domains to deliver a cohesive, scalable, and secure internal API ecosystem.

Product owner plays a crucial strategic role of our APIs at Nordea. It is a growing platform and this role drives enterprise-wide API strategy, operational excellence, developer enablement, and service governance.

Main responsibilities in this role:

• Own the vision, roadmap, and delivery of the internal API platform built on Kong Gateway Enterprise
• Partner with engineering, architecture, DevOps, and security teams to design and deliver scalable, secure, and performant API capabilities
• Contribute/Write/Update technical documentation such as high level designs or solution design documents
• Define and prioritize product features including API lifecycle management, governance, observability, onboarding, and self-service tools
• Drive API consumer and producer enablement, improving adoption through documentation, tooling, training and presentation events
• Lead cross-functional discovery and feedback sessions with platform users to continuously improve the developer experience
• Translate business and technical requirements into clear backlog items; maintain the product backlog and sprint planning in collaboration with the scrum team
• Vendor management and stakeholder management (Kong API Platform)

Who you are 

This is the right role for you if you are/have:

• Experienced product owner/platform product manager/solution architect with 5+ years of experience delivering technical products (in English)
• Excited about API management solutions (stay updated with API management trends and Kong ecosystem capabilities)
• Strong stakeholder management and strategic thinking skills
• Comfortable working closely with engineers and architects—able to translate complex technical needs into product decisions

Your background and skills include:

• Proven success managing or contributing to API Gateway platforms—ideally with hands-on experience in Kong or similar
• Strong understanding of API lifecycle management, RESTful APIs, authentication, rate limiting, caching, logging and policy enforcement
• Interested about platform thinking, API-first strategies, and driving internal adoption through great developer experience
• Skilled in tools like Jira, Confluence, Postman, Git and CI/CD pipelines

If you are more technically oriented, it is beneficial if you are/have:

• Experience migrating APIs to Kong from legacy API gateways (e.g., IBM DataPower, Apigee, MuleSoft)
• Familiar with API monetization models, API analytics, and plugin development in Lua or Go
• Background in platform engineering, DevOps, or cloud-native architectures, experience in Kubernetes and service mesh is a plus

What we offer

People come here when they want to get somewhere. For some, it’s to take their career to the next level. For others, it’s to break new ground within their area of expertise – in other words, with us, you will always move forward.

A culture that fosters performance and growth in one of the largest Nordic banks, offering various opportunities to evolve, develop and learn from brilliant colleagues with diverse backgrounds in a vibrant working environment.

Hybrid working model – we believe in the value of bringing people together and at the same time we embrace the freedom of flexibility.

Diversity and inclusion are a natural part of our daily work. We know that an inclusive workplace is a sustainable one. We genuinely believe that our diverse backgrounds, experiences, characteristics and traits make us stronger together. Every day we strive to find new ways to improve diversity and inclusion within our community e.g. we have signed the European Diversity Charters in the countries where we operate to show our commitment and engage with others to continue learning and improving.

If this sounds like you, get in touch!

Next steps

Submit your application no later than 12/10/2025.  For more information, you’re welcome to contact Vaibhav Padole at vaibhav.padole@nordea.com. Please note that we will proceed with potential candidates already during the application period.

We are Nordea. We have a 200-year history of supporting and growing the Nordic economies and our values are deeply rooted in these open, progressive and collaborative societies. As one of the biggest employers in the Nordics, Poland and Estonia, you have excellent opportunities to evolve, develop and move forward with us.

Only for candidates in Finland: A security clearance will be performed for the person selected for this position.

Only for candidates in Poland: Please include permit for processing personal data in CV as following:

In accordance with art. 6 (1) a and b. Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation) hereinafter ‘GDPR’. I agree to have: my personal data, education and employment history proceeded for the purposes of current and future recruitment processes in Nordea Bank Abp.

The administrator of your personal data is: Nordea Bank Abp operating in Poland through its Branch, address: Aleja Edwarda Rydza Śmiglego 20, 93-281 Łodź. Your personal data will be processed for the recruitment processes in Nordea Bank Abp. You have a right to access your personal data, right to rectify and right to delete. Disclosing the personal data in the scope specified by the provisions of Polish Labour Code from 26 June 1974 and executive acts are mandatory. Providing personal data is necessary to conduct the recruitment processes. The request for the deletion of your personal data means resignation from further participation in recruitment processes and causes the immediate removal of your application. Detailed information concerning processing of your personal data can be found at: https://www.nordea.com/en/doc/nordea-privacy-policy-for-applicants.pdf.

We reserve the right to reply only to selected applications.