Senior Manager, Professional Services

Are you ready to unlock intelligence

If you dont think you meet all of the criteria below but are still interested in the job please apply. Nobody checks every box - were looking for candidates that are particularly strong in a few areas and have some interest and capabilities in others.

AI traffic is about to outrun API traffic the same way API traffic outran human traffic. Come lead the team that gets enterprises through that transition.

If you dont think you meet every bullet below apply anyway. Nobody checks every box were looking for people who are strong in a few areas and hungry in the rest.

About the Role:

Kong is the connectivity layer of AI. Were a 6-time Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader and a Forrester Wave Leader running in production at Fortune 500 scale. Every enterprise moving from were piloting AI to AI is in production runs into the same wall: governance security and connectivity for a traffic pattern nobody built for. Thats the opportunity in front of this team and its why Professional Services is one of the fastest-growing parts of this company right now.

Were hiring a Professional Services Manager to lead a team of Forward Deployed Engineers and Engagement Managers across Kongs US Professional Services organization. This is a leadership role not a delivery role: youre directly responsible for delivery outcomes staffing and the growth of the people who sit hands-on with customer engineering teams every day.

You own the full engagement lifecycle for your book of business staffing the right FDE and Engagement Manager on every account holding the team to go-live dates and technical quality and driving resolution personally on the highest-risk or highest-value accounts. Youre operating at the intersection of people leadership technical delivery and enterprise account management and youre judged on outcomes not activity.

We want leaders whove done the implementation work themselves and now want to multiply that impact through a team: coach the engineers coach the engagement managers clear the blockers neither of them can clear alone and build the delivery muscle that lets Kong keep pace with enterprise demand for API and AI connectivity.

Youll work daily with Solutions Architects Sales Customer Success Product and Product Engineering scoping engagements correctly before they land on your team and feeding what you learn in the field straight back into how Kong builds and sells.

This is a rare seat: AI connectivity is a land grab right now and the person who builds this teams delivery model in the next 18 months owns a track record that doesnt come around twice.

Impact

Lead the team that turns Kongs platform into production reality for some of the worlds largest enterprises the ones deciding right now how AI gets governed secured and scaled across their business.

Growth

Build your leadership craft against the fastest-moving category in enterprise software: AI connectivity cloud-native architecture and distributed systems at Fortune 500 scale. Prove out this teams model and the case for more scope writes itself.

Opportunity

Join a Professional Services organization growing as fast as the AI adoption curve its built to serve market-leading credibility behind every conversation you walk into and a direct hand in building the delivery model while its still being written.

What Youll Do:

• Manage and grow a team of Forward Deployed Engineers and Engagement Managers hiring coaching career development and performance management.

• Own delivery outcomes across your book of business: go-live dates technical quality and customer satisfaction. Report on them with the same rigor youd demand from your team.

• Staff the right FDE and Engagement Manager to every engagement based on account complexity technical scope and team capacity.

• Be the senior escalation point on at-risk or high-complexity engagements drive resolution and direct the teams response personally.

• Run your teams operating cadence: staffing reviews at-risk reviews 1:1s and status reporting up to Professional Services leadership.

• Partner with Sales Customer Success and Solutions Architecture to scope new engagements accurately and take clean handoffs from pre-sale to delivery.

• Set and enforce delivery standards across your team reusable accelerators reference architectures and best practices that outlive any single engagement.

• Feed what your team learns in the field back to Kong Product and Engineering real customer signal shapes our roadmap.

• Lead your teams work on the strategic initiatives that matter most right now: AI connectivity governance platform modernization and cloud-native transformation.

What Youll Bring:

Experience

• 8 years in customer-facing engineering professional services or platform engineering including 2 years directly managing a technical customer-facing team.

• A track record of delivery leadership in API gateways API management integrations or distributed systems platforms deep enough that you can direct and evaluate your teams work not just review it.

• Experience managing staffing capacity and prioritization across a portfolio of concurrent enterprise engagements.

• Strong Kubernetes and cloud-native infrastructure fluency enough to unblock your team and hold your own with customer architects and executives.

• Experience with major cloud providers: AWS Azure or GCP.

• Comfort directing and evaluating automation frameworks deployment tooling CI/CD pipelines or migration tooling built by your team.

• Prior experience in API Management Open Source Middleware SaaS or Infrastructure software companies is a strong plus.

Preferred Attributes

• A decisive leadership mindset you make the staffing and prioritization call and drive it to resolution without needing to do the work yourself.

• Comfortable operating in ambiguous fast-moving enterprise environments where the right call today beats the perfect call next week.

• A genuine passion for growing engineers and engagement managers into their next role this job is measured in the careers you build not just the accounts you save.

• Excellent communication across technical and executive audiences internal and customer-facing.

• Highly organized with strong prioritization and execution across a multi-account portfolio.

• Real enthusiasm for AI modern infrastructure and cloud-native technology this team is living the shift not reading about it.

• A strong sense of ownership for outcomes that arent always fully in your control thats the job.

#LI-KH1

About Kong:

Kong Inc. the AI Connectivity Company is building the connectivity layer of AI. Trusted by the Fortune 500 and AI-native startups alike Kongs unified API and AI platform enables organizations to secure manage accelerate govern and monetize the flow of intelligence across APIs and AI traffic on any model any cloud. For more information visit .

Required Experience:

Senior Manager