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Director of Professional Services - EMEA

Kong
EMEA
Remote
Full-time
6
Moderate

Summary

Responsibilities

  • Lead the Customer Experience Professional Services team in the EMEA region.
  • Ensure successful operations of Field Engineers and Solution Architects.
  • Provide strategic direction and mentorship while managing P&L responsibility.

Requirements

  • 10+ years of relevant professional services experience including 5+ years of senior leadership experience.
  • Proven ability in managing professional services functions.
  • Strong communication skills and the ability to operate transparently and authentically.

Work-Life Balance Benefits

  • Remote work options
  • Supportive company culture
  • Flexible working hours

Benefits

  • Strong VC backing and Series D funding
  • Recognition for innovation and leadership in the connectivity space
  • Great Place to Work Certified in 2020 & 2021

Apply Now

👉 Please mention that you found this job on CalmJobs, thanks!

Full Details of Job Post

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 dynamic, fast paced, and sometimes hectic startup as the Regional Director of Kong's Customer Experience Professional Services team which has the core responsibility of engaging with our customers across the post-sales lifecycle, ensuring they receive the utmost value from their investment in Kong technology.

As the leader of this team, you will ensure the successful day to day operations of our Field Engineers and Solution Architects in the EMEA region.

The world-class support & technical consulting services this team provides is quintessential in driving customer satisfaction, retention, & future expansion. Our Field Engineers are available to guide customers through the implementation and delivery of Kong technology while our Solution Architects are available to serve as long-term trusted and strategic advisors throughout the technical journey, helping to outline an overall API strategy and drive the continued education, adoption, and use of Kong solutions.  

In this role, you will provide strategic direction and mentorship while owning direct reporting and P&L responsibility.  Additionally, you will serve as a trusted partner and sponsor for our largest and most critical customers, interfacing with everyone from Developers to Executives as you representing Kong culture and values every day.

This is one of the most challenging roles in the industry and we are trying to do things differently. Your existing playbook and experience will be useful but expect the need to innovate and be creative in how we address everything from titles to billable project structure.  

Above all you’ll be acting as a stellar leader and mentor for the rest of Kong. 

Position Expectations:

    • Accountability for the services utilization and revenue targets while holding self and Kong to a high standard of customer experience
    • Lead an organization responsible for deliberate and material influencing of customer adoption and consumption of services
    • Establish and maintain a culture of mutual accountability between Professional Services and customers
    • Partner with other field EMEA teams (Partner, Sales, Customer Success, Support, Pre-Sales) for continuous improvement of our customer engagement methodologies
    • Support Kong teams in management of risk throughout the engagement lifecycle
    • Responsible for developing the capabilities and maturity of the leaders and employees on your team
    • Responsible for developing/ enhancing capabilities and GTM Offerings to drive adoption and consumption
    • Ensure healthy relationships with the Kong delivery ecosystem (sub- partners, contractors, GSIs) to maintain complementary delivery capacity 
    • Owner of all delivery assets, tools, capabilities, systems, processes, and playbooks
    • Aggressively maintain a robust recruiting pipeline, attracting the highest quality talent in the industry to support excellence and rapid growth
    • Building business case for head counts and collaborating with other functions like HR, Finance, Ops for approvals
    • Collaborating with other functions across the company as a key partner to EMEA Professional Services strategy development and execution

Success Measures:

    • Achieve and exceed EMEA revenue targets (billable utilization as proxy)
    • Identify and manage leading indicators around deliberate behaviors that help to accelerate customer consumption
    • Successful evolution of the capability of Kong Professional Services - roles and responsibilities, career paths, scalability of team, capacity, and delivery excellence
    • Kong Professional Services regional teams increasingly capable of delivering complex projects
    • Kong Professional Services regional teams increasingly effective at influencing customer decisions
    • Healthy Partner leverage to drive revenue realization 

Who you are:

    • Above all - a leader who loves growing their team
    • Expressively passionate and determined about technology 
    • Collaborative and enjoy working with others
    • You operate with the utmost transparency and authenticity both internally and externally
    • Self-awareness and strong communication skills are a must
    • You have 10+ years of relevant professional services experience including 5+ years of senior leadership experience
    • You are familiar with modern software constructs and architectural patterns and how to discuss them with humans while also knowing your limits and can hand off to the team when necessary 
    • Proven ability in managing professional services functions
    • Proven ability to write and present on complex topics
    • Proven track record of exceeding key business goals including bookings, revenue, margin, NDR and similar
    • Prior experience in Open-Source/ SaaS companies is highly preferred
    • Prior experience managing customer facing teams with financial goals is highly preferred
    • Ability to travel to customer and Kong locations as-needed (post COVID)
Why should you want to work at Kong?  

Market Opportunity - We are on a quest to build a $10b+ software company over the next few years and need YOUR help!
·      Why APIs Matter? APIs have been enabling innovation for decades!
·      Strong VC team, Series D, strong year over year revenue growth!
Technical Leadership - We are recognized as the leader in innovation in the connectivity space.
·      Marco, our CTO/co-founder- “We are the Cisco of L4 and L7” - CUBE Conversation, March 2021
·      We are the leading innovator in the connectivity space!
Amazing Team & Culture - Come be a "Konger" and find out what we mean.
·      Great Place to Work Certified in 2020 & 2021
·      Kong employees exemplify our culture at our 2022 Sales Kickoff
Building Great Products - Learn why the world's largest companies love our tech!
·      Over 250m+ downloads of our open-source API gateway! 
·      Over 40k+ stars on GitHub between Kong API and Kong Insomnia!


What is a Konger? 
We are a group of makers, thinkers, and doers focused on helping today’s developers build tomorrow’s technology. Our teams work on the bleeding edge of API innovation to provide our users with a central nervous system for data and services. 

We put design at the heart of everything we do, and we’re relentlessly focused on creating beautiful experiences for our customers. That’s why technology companies, major banks, e-commerce innovators, and government agencies put Kong in front of their most important web applications. 

We believe in the power of Open Source and everything it stands for. That’s why developers around the world enthusiastically contribute on top of our open-source platform. 

We are passionate about solving challenges that will fundamentally shape the future of technology, and we’re looking for the right people to join us on our mission. If you believe in taking ownership of your work, making an impact, and having fun along the way, we would love to talk to you.


Kong Core Values: 
Be Inclusive. We work together from anywhere to achieve our common goals. Our differences make us stronger. 

Be Authentic. We are genuine, principled and confident without arrogance. Show respect and kindness, especially in tough moments. 

Be Relentlessly Resourceful. We work with purpose, obsession and grit. It takes muscle to do hard things and doing hard things build muscle. 

Be Customer Obsessed. We care. Customers are everything, we put them at the center of everything you do. We are all empowered to make an impact. 

Be Curious. We value ideas over hierarchy. Never accept the status quo. We make bold bets, fail, and learn everyday. There is always a way. 

Be an Owner. We are drivers not passengers and own the quality and outcomes of our work.


About Kong: 
Kong is THE cloud native API platform with the fastest, most adopted API gateway in the world (over 300m downloads!). Loved by developers and trusted with enterprises’ most critical traffic volumes, Kong helps startups and Fortune 500 companies build with confidence – allowing them to bring solutions to market faster with API and service connectivity that scales easily and securely. 

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.

Apply Now

👉 Please mention that you found this job on CalmJobs, thanks!

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