Staff Technical Customer Success Manager

Kong Inc.; California (MO); Hybrid; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Kong Inc., the AI Connectivity Company, seeks a Customer Experience professional to join the CX team in the United States. You will enable customers to leverage APIs and microservices to drive business initiatives, ensuring they realize the value of their Kong investment throughout their lifecycle.

You will manage a portfolio of commercial customers, collaborate with US sales and product teams, coach customers across adoption and post-sales engagement, and help shape tooling and processes to

Qualifications

• Experience in customer-facing, technically advanced SaaS environments (open source and/or infrastructure software).
• Strong understanding of Cloud Native technologies (Containers, Kubernetes, Microservices) and API management (APIM).
• Excellent communication and organizational skills; proven ability to manage customer portfolios and drive outcomes.
• Experience using modern customer engagement techniques to automate and scale workflows.

Responsibilities

• Coach customers throughout their lifecycle and collaborate with CX teams to ensure outcomes.
• Inspire customers to adopt AI/API-driven capabilities and align Kong solutions with their future vision.
• Collaborate with Sales and Product to maximize value from Kong solutions.
• Define what good adoption plans look like and contribute to post-sales engagement strategies.
• Help innovate tooling and processes to increase team efficiency.
• Become an SME on Kong products and technologies and apply knowledge to customer usage.
• Build relationships with peers, business partners, and groups.

Skills

Big-picture thinking

Portfolio management

Self-starter

Communication skills

Cloud Native & DevOps basics

APIM & microservices knowledge

Customer-facing experience

Tools

Kubernetes

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.

About the Role:

You will be working at a dynamic and fast paced start-up as a member of the Customer Experience (CX) team. You will be enabling Customers to leverage APIs and microservices to drive their business initiatives in one of the most exciting and innovative technology domains in the industry. This team is responsible for interfacing with our customers throughout their lifecycle helping them realize the value of their Kong investment.

As a member of the CX team you will act as a champion for our most critical asset, our customers. You will be working with a portfolio of customers seeking to identify growth opportunities and ensuring they have what they need to be successful. In this role you will work alongside the US sales teams and will have the opportunity to build a large portfolio of Customers.

This is an incredibly exciting role at the forefront of technology. You will not only be building strong relationships with key customers, you will be pioneering the approach to managing customers by leveraging self service technology and re-usable assets to maximize the value Kong can provide.

What You"ll Do:

• Coach customers throughout their lifecycle while working collaboratively with the rest of the Customer Experience teams to ensure customer outcomes.
• Inspire customers to create an AI, API optimized vision for their future; with your partnership and Kong’s solution as a pivotal part of the path ahead.
• Co-Define what ‘good’ looks like in terms of adoption plans, post-sales engagement, what is recommended and why.
• Work with Sales and Product teams to ensure Kong customers are getting the most out of the solution.
• Help innovate tooling and processes to make you and your team more efficient.
• Work on innovative and cutting edge customer projects.
• Become an SME on Kong products and technologies, taking that knowledge and applying it to real world usage.
• Collaborate with other peers, business partners and groups.

What You'll Bring:

• Have a builder’s mentality, seeking to find solutions to complex problems that will make life better for Kong customers and internal teams alike.
• Manage a portfolio of commercial customers, looking for patterns that can be addressed through an automated approach using the latest customer engagement techniques.
• Have passion and determination about Kong’s technology and growing customer base.
• Be a self starter with strong organizational skills to drive effective customer outcomes.
• Have a good understanding of complex technology environments.
• Have great self awareness and strong communication skills.
• Bring proven experience in customer-facing, technically advanced environments via SaaS, Open Source and/or Infrastructure software companies.
• Have a solid understanding of Cloud Native and the technologies that make it work; (Containers, Kubernetes, Microservices) as well as have a foundational understanding of APIM.
• Understand the value of DevOps, CI/CD and Cloud Computing IaaS

#LI-JW1

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, Kong’s 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 www.konghq.com.