Manager of Professional Services, APJ

Are you ready to power the World's connections?

If you don’t think you meet all of the criteria below but are still interested in the job, please apply. Nobody checks every box - we’re looking for candidates that are particularly strong in a few areas, and have some interest and capabilities in others.

About the role:

You will be working at a fast-paced startup as the leader of the Professional Services, APJ team, reporting to the Director of Customer Experience. This organisation has roles that are responsible for interfacing with our customers across the pre and post-sales lifecycle, and you will be responsible for driving customer value realization and overall customer experience.

Our Manager of Professional Services is responsible for delivering Consulting and Implementation services to our Global Enterprise customers. The ideal candidate will have experience managing multiple implementations, have excellent communication skills, and be a proactive, solution-oriented, strategic leader.

The ideal Manager of Professional Services will have a strong and proven track record of successfully hiring and managing top talent. They will have an excellent work ethic, be self-motivated, and team-oriented, have strong organizational skills, and be focused on exceeding customer expectations. Above all, you’ll be acting as a stellar leader and mentor for the rest of Kong.

What You'll Be Doing:

• Own Professional Services teams including hiring, staffing, growth, and day-to-day operations.
• Takes entrepreneurial mindset to build Kong’s Professional Services team, offerings, approach, and tools to deliver an exceptional service experience.
• Own P&L responsibilities for headcount planning, enhancing productivity, project deliverables, risk management and achieving department and company objectives.
• Collaborate and partner with multiple teams regularly (Sales, Product, Marketing, Customer Success, Support, etc) helping to build customer value realization “brand” across our entire organization.
• Define, build, and execute playbooks aligned to effective solutions for the customer journey including project plans and revises as appropriate to meet changing needs and requirements.
• Sets and manages client expectations.
• Continually seeks opportunities to increase customer satisfaction and deepen client relationships.

What We Are Looking For:

• 8 years or more of service delivery management experience with a focus on enterprise software solutions.
• Technical mindset with the aptitude to learn about development environments and API management domain.
• Consulting experience is required; PMP or CPM Certification is a plus.
• Demonstrated success in leading and managing people in a team-based environment.
• Self-motivated with the ability to work in a fast-paced environment.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills.
• Working knowledge of cloud architectures such as AWS, Azure and GCP.
• Some experience with command line HTTP clients: cURL, HTTPie, Postman, etc.
• Familiarity with authentication schemes: OAuth2, JWT, HTTP basic access, etc.
• Prior experience in Open Source companies is highly preferred.
• Ability to travel to customer and Kong locations as needed (post-COVID).

About Kong:

Kong is THE cloud native API platform with the fastest, most adopted API gateway in the world (over 300m downloads!). As the innovation leader of cloud API technologies, Kong is on a mission to enable companies around the world to become "API-first" and securely accelerate AI adoption. Kong helps organizations globally - from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises - unleash developer productivity, build securely and accelerate to market.

83% of web traffic today is API calls! APIs are the connective tissue of the cloud and the underlying technology that allows software to talk and interact with one another. Therefore, we believe that APIs act as the nervous system of the cloud. Our audacious mission is to build the nervous system that will safely and reliably connect all of humankind!

For more information about Kong, please visit konghq.com or follow @thekonginc on Twitter. We are an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or veteran status.

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