Director Partner Programs & Operations Manager

Kong; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Kong is hiring a Director, Partner Operations to build the operating model that helps it scale. You’ll be the operating partner to the Ecosystem VP and Partner Sales leaders, sitting in Revenue Operations.

You own how partner business flows through Kong — registration, deal structure, attribution, crediting, and payout — and you bring an AI-first mindset to how it runs.

Responsibilities

• Partner with Ecosystem leadership across theaters to align strategy and operations.
• Lead annual and quarterly planning for the partner organization, including targets, capacity, and coverage.
• Own the rules that govern how partner deals are registered, protected, sourced, and credited, including sourced vs. influenced credit and lookback windows.
• Define and own how partner-touched leads and deals move between ADR, PSD, and AE, including routing, SLAs, and prioritization.
• Partner with Deal Desk, Finance, and Legal to structure, discount, and book partner deals across resale, referral, and cloud marketplace routes.
• Coordinate partner compensation crediting with incentives on channel-neutral crediting and referral fees.
• Manage Kong’s cloud marketplace operations across AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, including listings and private offers.
• Define and report the partner KPIs that matter and provide a single view for leadership

Job description

Are you ready to unlock intelligence?

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.

Partners are one of Kong's biggest levers for AI Gateway pipeline and bookings, and our partner business is growing fast.

Kong is hiring a Director, Partner Operations to build the operating model that helps it scale.

You’ll be the operating partner to the Ecosystem VP and Partner Sales leaders, sitting in Revenue Operations.

You own how partner business flows through Kong — registration, deal structure, attribution, crediting, and payout — and you bring an AI-first mindset to how it runs.

Key responsibilities:

• Business partner to Ecosystem leadershipServe as the strategic and operational partner to the Ecosystem VP and Partner Sales leaders across theaters. Run an AI-assisted operating cadence — forecast and pipeline reviews, QBRs, and executive reporting — where the prep is automated and meetings go to decisions. Facilitate cross-functional alignment on people, then process, then systems, so changes are agreed before they are configured.
• Partner GTM strategy planningLead annual and quarterly planning for the partner organization, including targets, capacity, and coverage. Help build a business that maximizes the impact of partner investments and resources.
• Rules of engagement, deal registration attributionOwn the rules that govern how partner deals are registered, protected, sourced, and credited, including sourced vs. influenced credit, lookback windows, and the line between partner credit and partner marketing credit. Encode them into systems and agents so they apply automatically.
• Partner lead deal workflows: Define and own how partner-touched leads and deals move between ADR, PSD, and AE, including routing, SLAs, and prioritization. Cover partner event leads, prospective partners, existing partners, and deal registrations, and give PSDs one view of the leads that need their action.
• Partner deal executionPartner with Deal Desk, Finance, and Legal to make partner deals easy to structure, discount, and book across resale, referral, and cloud marketplace routes
• Partner compensation creditingPartner with Incentive Compensation on channel-neutral crediting and referral fees, so sellers choose the best route to market.
• Manage cloud marketplace operations: Own Kong’s cloud marketplace operations across AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, including listings, private offers, channel partner private offers (CPPOs), and co-sell registration. Lead the launch of marketplaces in new regions, and manage marketplace dynamics with Deal Desk, Finance, and the cloud alliances team, including fees, customer commit drawdown, and partner involvement on marketplace deals.
• Performance insights data qualityDefine and report the partner KPIs that matter, give every partner l