Kong Operator integration with cloud-provider Gateway API / AWS ALB

Feature Requests & Feedback
1

We successfully validated Kong Operator + Konnect behind an AWS ALB using Gateway API. Today this requires two Gateway controllers:

  • konghq.com/gateway-operator to manage the Kong Gateway/DataPlane and application HTTPRoutes.
  • gateway.k8s.aws/alb via AWS Load Balancer Controller to provision the ALB and forward traffic to the Kong Service.

Would Kong consider supporting a model where konghq.com/gateway-operator can also orchestrate the external cloud load balancer associated with a Kong Gateway, either directly or through a provider integration?

For example, we would ideally like a GatewayConfiguration to express an AWS ALB/WAF frontend and have Kong Operator reconcile the complete lifecycle:

ALB + WAF → Kong DataPlane → developer HTTPRoutes

This would be especially valuable on EKS Auto Mode because otherwise adopting ALB through Gateway API introduces AWS Load Balancer Controller as an additional self-managed platform component.

Is this type of cloud-provider integration on the Kong Operator roadmap, or is the intended long-term architecture always to compose Kong Operator with a separate cloud-provider Gateway controller such as AWS LBC?