Role overview

Kong is the connectivity layer for AI, recognized as a 6-time Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader and Forrester Wave Leader serving Fortune 500 companies in production environments. As Professional Services Manager, you’ll lead a team of Field Engineers and Engagement Managers across Kong’s US organization, managing the full lifecycle of customer engagements as enterprises transition from AI pilots to production deployments. This leadership role focuses on delivery outcomes, team growth, and removing obstacles rather than hands-on delivery work.

Key responsibilities

Hire, coach, develop, and manage the performance of a team of Field Engineers and Engagement Managers across the US region.
Own delivery outcomes including go-live dates, technical quality, and customer satisfaction across your portfolio of accounts, with rigorous performance reporting.
Staff the right Field Engineer and Engagement Manager to each engagement based on account complexity, technical scope, and team capacity constraints.
Serve as the senior escalation point for at-risk or high-complexity engagements, personally driving resolution and directing team response.
Run operational cadences including staffing reviews, at-risk reviews, one-on-ones, and status reporting to Professional Services leadership.
Partner with Sales, Customer Success, and Solutions Architecture to scope engagements accurately and ensure clean handoffs from pre-sale to delivery phases.
Establish and enforce delivery standards across your team, including reusable accelerators and reference architectures that benefit multiple engagements.
Feed field learnings back to Kong Product and Engineering teams to inform roadmap decisions and product strategy.

Requirements

At least 8 years of experience in customer-facing engineering, professional services, or platform engineering roles, with a minimum of 2 years directly managing a technical, customer-facing team.
Demonstrated delivery leadership track record in API gateways, API management, integrations, or distributed systems platforms at a depth that allows you to direct and evaluate your team’s technical work.
Experience managing staffing, capacity planning, and prioritization across a portfolio of concurrent enterprise engagements.
Strong Kubernetes and cloud-native infrastructure fluency sufficient to unblock your team and engage effectively with customer architects and executives.
Hands-on experience with major cloud providers including AWS, Azure, or GCP.
Comfort evaluating and directing automation frameworks, deployment tooling, CI/CD pipelines, and migration tooling developed by your team.
Prior experience at API Management, Open Source, Middleware, SaaS, or Infrastructure software companies is a strong advantage.

What makes this role worth considering

AI connectivity is a emerging market segment with significant growth, and you’ll be building the delivery model during a critical expansion phase. The Professional Services organization is among the fastest-growing parts of Kong, giving you the opportunity to shape team culture and operational practices while scaling. This role sits at the intersection of people leadership, technical delivery, and enterprise account management, working daily with Solutions Architects, Sales, Customer Success, and Product teams to drive impact across Fortune 500 enterprises navigating AI governance and security challenges.