Staff Technical Customer Success Manager

KONG; Sacramento (CA); On-site; USD 110,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Kong is seeking a Customer Experience professional to empower a diverse portfolio of customers. You will guide lifecycle success, collaborate with Sales and Product teams, and champion Kong’s API and AI-enabled solutions.

This role emphasizes adoption, automation, and scalable customer engagement across SaaS and open-source ecosystems. You will partner with US sales, build strong customer relationships, and push innovative projects while becoming an SME on Kong technologies, including APIM and

Qualifications

• Experience managing customer lifecycles in SaaS/Open Source or infrastructure software environments.
• Familiarity with cloud-native architectures including containers and microservices.
• Understanding of API management (APIM) and related tooling.
• Proven ability to communicate effectively with customers and internal teams.
• Comfortable driving adoption and post-sales engagements with automated strategies.

Responsibilities

• Coach customers throughout their lifecycle in collaboration with CX teams.
• Inspire customers to adopt AI/API-enabled visions leveraging Kong solutions.
• Define adoption plans and post-sales engagement standards with Sales and Product teams.
• Collaborate with Sales, Product, and other groups to maximize customer value.
• Contribute to tooling and process improvements for team efficiency.
• Work on innovative customer projects and become a Kong product SME.
• Build and maintain strong customer relationships across a portfolio.

Skills

Customer lifecycle management

SaaS/Open Source experience

Cloud Native technologies

Kubernetes

APIM understanding

DevOps/CI-CD

Strong communication

Microservices

Tools

Kong API Platform

CI/CD tools

Job description

Are you ready to unlock intelligence?

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

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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.