Partner Sales Director

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

Job summary

Kong is seeking a Partner Sales Director to own the partner business within the DACH region. You will recruit high-potential partners, build a go-to-market motion with them, and drive sourced incremental revenue, not just pipeline.

As a senior individual contributor, you will run the territory like a small business, collaborate with the sales leader, and coordinate cross-functional teams to land multi-partner deals across Kong Gateway products.

Qualifications

• Experience leading partner programs and ecosystem
• Strong track record in driving partner-sourced revenue
• Ability to recruit, onboard and enable partners
• Proven stakeholder management across sales, marketing and engineering

Responsibilities

• Own the partner revenue number for the assigned territory.
• Sell Kong's full portfolio through focus partners and drive renewals and services.
• Build the joint go-to-market plan with the territory's sales team.
• Identify and sign new partners to fill gaps in the ecosystem.
• Drive partner-sourced and partner-influenced pipeline with deal registrations and co-selling motions.
• Create joint assets with partners (reference architectures, blueprints, solution briefs).
• Run joint marketing events to generate pipeline, not just logos on a banner.
• Understand partners’ business models and how Kong fits to win together.
• Coordinate cross-functional support (enablement, CX, marketing, ops) to land projects.
• Build and execute a focus-partner plan with sales engineering and marketing.

Skills

Partner management

Sales leadership

Strategic planning

Channel sales

Sales enablement

Tools

CRM (Salesforce)

Job description

A strong partner ecosystem is crucial to the success and growth of Kong's business. Partners are a strategic imperative for Kong's continued growth and market expansion. As customer requirements become more complex, we need partners with the capability and capacity to help customers implement, support and grow their usage of Kong. We work closely with cross-functional leadership to ensure partners are integrated throughout the sales cycle, both pre- and post-sale.

The Partner Sales Director owns Kong's partner business within the DACH territory. That means recruiting the right partners, building a real go-to-market motion with them, and driving sourced incremental revenue, not slideware pipeline. The PSD is the single point of contact for anything partner-related: for field sellers who need partner help on a deal, for partners who need a path into Kong, and for leadership setting regional strategy.

The ecosystem spans channel resellers, technology partners, GSIs, and hyperscalers (AWS, Azure, GCP), and the PSM works across all four. At the Intermediate level and above, this is a senior individual contributor role: the PSD runs their territory as their own business, in close partnership with the territory's sales leader.

Responsibilities

• Own the partner revenue number for your assigned territory.
• Sell Kong's full portfolio (products, renewals, professional services, and support) through and with focus partners.
• Build the joint go-to-market plan with your territory's sales team.
• Identify and sign new partners where there are gaps.
• Drive partner-sourced pipeline: set targets, run the cadence, and hold partners (and yourself) accountable to them, favoring net-new sourced business over tagging partners onto deals you'd close anyway.
• Drive partner-sourced and partner-influenced pipeline by coordinating deal registration, lead sharing, and co-selling motions for Kong Gateway, Kong AI Gateway, Kong Mesh, and Konnect.
• Build joint assets with focus partners, such as reference architectures, blueprints, and solution briefs that field teams on both sides actually use.
• Run joint marketing events that generate pipeline, not just logos on a banner.
• Get inside your partners' business: understand how they make money, where Kong fits, and what it takes to win together.
• Pull in the right cross-functional support (enablement, CX, marketing, ops) to make the projects land.
• Build a focus partner plan for your territory and execute it alongside sales engineering, SDRs, customer success, and marketing.
• Partner with and Partner Sales Engineers to ensure partners have the technical readiness needed to sell and deliver Kong solutions.
• Build, maintain, and manage relationships with the Kong field s