---
title: 'Senior Manager, Professional Services at Kong'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-manager-professional-services-kong-new-york-17he7ssbepy6'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-16'
---

# Senior Manager, Professional Services at Kong

- **Company:** [Kong](https://feeny.ai/companies/kong)
- **Location:** New York, NY
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-10-06
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-16
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/kong/0f23b93a-840e-4049-864b-c50f8162f216

## Job description

Are you ready to unlock intelligence? If you don’t think you meet all of the criteria below but are still interested in the job, please apply. 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.

AI traffic is about to outrun API traffic the same way API traffic outran human traffic. Come lead the team that gets enterprises through that transition. If you don't think you meet every bullet below, apply anyway. Nobody checks every box — we're looking for people who are strong in a few areas and hungry in the rest.

About the Role: Kong is the connectivity layer of AI. We're a 6-time Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader and a Forrester Wave Leader, running in production at Fortune 500 scale. Every enterprise moving from “we're piloting AI” to “AI is in production” runs into the same wall: governance, security, and connectivity for a traffic pattern nobody built for. That's the opportunity in front of this team, and it's why Professional Services is one of the fastest-growing parts of this company right now. We're hiring a Professional Services Manager to lead a team of Field Engineers and Engagement Managers across Kong's US Professional Services organization. This is a leadership role, not a delivery role: you're directly responsible for delivery outcomes, staffing, and the growth of the people who sit hands-on with customer engineering teams every day. You own the full engagement lifecycle for your book of business — staffing the right Field Engineers and Engagement Managers on every account, holding the team to go-live dates and technical quality, and driving resolution personally on the highest-risk or highest-value accounts. You're operating at the intersection of people leadership, technical delivery, and enterprise account management, and you're judged on outcomes, not activity. We want leaders who've done the implementation work themselves and now want to multiply that impact through a team: coach the engineers, clear the blockers and build the delivery muscle that lets Kong keep pace with enterprise demand for API and AI connectivity. You'll work daily with Solutions Architects, Sales, Customer Success, Product, and Product Engineering — scoping engagements correctly before they land on your team, and feeding what you learn in the field straight back into how Kong builds and sells. This is a rare seat: AI connectivity is a land grab right now, and the person who builds this team's delivery model in the next 18 months owns a track record that doesn't come around twice. Impact Lead the team that turns Kong's platform into production reality for some of the world's largest enterprises — the ones deciding right now how AI gets governed, secured, and scaled across their business. Growth Build your leadership craft against the fastest-moving category in enterprise software: AI connectivity, cloud-native architecture, and distributed systems at Fortune 500 scale. Prove out this team's model and the case for more scope writes itself. Opportunity Join a Professional Services organization growing as fast as the AI adoption curve it's built to serve — market-leading credibility behind every conversation you walk into, and a direct hand in building the delivery model while it's still being written.

What You'll Do:

- Manage and grow a team of Field Engineers and Engagement Managers — hiring, coaching, career development, and performance management.
- Own delivery outcomes across your book of business: go-live dates, technical quality, and customer satisfaction. Report on them with the same rigor you'd demand from your team.
- Staff the right Field Engineer and Engagement Manager to every engagement based on account complexity, technical scope, and team capacity.
- Be the senior escalation point on at-risk or high-complexity engagements — drive resolution and direct the team's response personally.
- Run your team's operating cadence: staffing reviews, at-risk reviews, 1:1s, and status reporting up to Professional Services leadership.
- Partner with Sales, Customer Success, and Solutions Architecture to scope new engagements accurately and take clean handoffs from pre-sale to delivery.
- Set and enforce delivery standards across your team — reusable accelerators, reference architectures, and best practices that outlive any single engagement.
- Feed what your team learns in the field back to Kong Product and Engineering — real customer signal shapes our roadmap.
- Lead your team's work on the strategic initiatives that matter most right now: AI connectivity, governance, platform modernization, and cloud-native transformation.

What You'll Bring:

## Experience

- 8+ years in customer-facing engineering, professional services, or platform engineering, including 2+ years directly managing a technical, customer-facing team.
- A track record of delivery leadership in API gateways, API management, integrations, or distributed systems platforms — deep enough that you can direct and evaluate your team's work, not just review it.
- Experience managing staffing, capacity, and prioritization across a portfolio of concurrent enterprise engagements.
- Strong Kubernetes and cloud-native infrastructure fluency — enough to unblock your team and hold your own with customer architects and executives.
- Experience with major cloud providers: AWS, Azure, or GCP.
- Comfort directing and evaluating automation frameworks, deployment tooling, CI/CD pipelines, or migration tooling built by your team.
- Prior experience in API Management, Open Source, Middleware, SaaS, or Infrastructure software companies is a strong plus.

## Preferred Attributes

- A decisive leadership mindset — you make the staffing and prioritization call and drive it to resolution without needing to do the work yourself.
- Comfortable operating in ambiguous, fast-moving enterprise environments where the right call today beats the perfect call next week.
- A genuine passion for growing engineers and engagement managers into their next role — this job is measured in the careers you build, not just the accounts you save.
- Excellent communication across technical and executive audiences, internal and customer-facing.
- Highly organized, with strong prioritization and execution across a multi-account portfolio.
- Real enthusiasm for AI, modern infrastructure, and cloud-native technology — this team is living the shift, not reading about it.
- A strong sense of ownership for outcomes that aren't always fully in your control — that's the job.

## #LI-KH1

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](http://www.konghq.com).

## About Kong

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Kong provides a unified API and AI platform that connects, secures, and manages APIs, events, and AI agents for modern architectures.
- **Entity Type**: Private – Series E, post‑money valuation $2B (2023)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2017 (company formalized; roots as Mashape go back to 2009)
- **Founders**: Augusto “Aghi” Marietti (CEO) and Marco Palladino (CTO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: API management, AI connectivity, cloud infrastructure
- **Target customers**: B2B – enterprises, platform engineering teams, developers, and product managers building API‑driven or AI‑agent applications
- **Mission / Purpose**: To be the AI connectivity company – enabling organizations to connect, govern, and monetize APIs, events, and AI workloads at scale.

## Products & Services
- **[Kong Konnect](https://konghq.com/)**: Managed, unified API and AI platform covering the full lifecycle – design, test, publish, govern, monetize – across any cloud or environment. SaaS.
- **[Kong Gateway](https://konghq.com/)**: Open‑source (and enterprise) API gateway, the world’s most adopted, used for traffic management, security, and observability. Open‑source hybrid.
- **[Kong AI Gateway](https://konghq.com/)**: Extension for managing and securing AI traffic – token consumption, cost control, and agent governance. SaaS / add‑on.
- **[Kong Mesh](https://konghq.com/)**: Enterprise service mesh for Kubernetes and VMs (based on Kuma, donated to CNCF). Infrastructure.
- **[Insomnia](https://konghq.com/)**: API design and testing tool (acquired and integrated into the Kong ecosystem). Desktop / CLI.
- **[OpenMeter](https://konghq.com/)**: Usage‑based billing, entitlements, and invoicing for APIs, events, and AI (acquired 2025). SaaS.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation / Market Cap**: $2 billion (as of late 2023 Series E round) – not publicly traded.
- **Key Metric**: Surpassed **$100M ARR** in late 2023; processes **+1 trillion API/AI requests per day**; **600+ employees** in 25+ countries (LinkedIn reports 738 employees with +23.5% YoY growth).
- **Total Funding**: **$344.1M** across 6 rounds (including Series D $100M at $1.4B, and Series E $175M led by new investors).
- **Notable Investors / Partners**: Include large institutional investors; partners include cloud providers and enterprises such as United Airlines (cited as customer). Open‑source community with 182K+ community users.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Most adopted open‑source API gateway** – strong developer mindshare and large community.
- **Unified platform** covering the entire API lifecycle plus AI agent management, reducing fragmentation for enterprises.
- **High‑performance, low‑latency** – proven at hyper‑volume (+1T requests/day), 99.99% availability SLA.
- **Strategic acquisitions** (Kuma, Insomnia, OpenMeter) that plug gaps in service mesh, developer tooling, and usage‑based billing.
- **Strong enterprise DNA** – trusted by global brands for mission‑critical applications.

## Strategic Focus
- **AI connectivity** – building the layer to manage LLM traffic, agent security, token cost, and real‑time data streams.
- **Monetization** – enabling customers to monetize APIs and AI consumption (chargeback, entitlements, pricing).
- **Developer productivity** – accelerating onboarding and reducing costs (claims 15% faster development, 57% operational cost reduction).
- **Global scale** – growing remote workforce and entering new geographic markets (e.g., Italy, ANZ roles posted).

## Why Work Here
- **Remote‑first culture** – 600+ employees across 25+ countries; strong emphasis on global collaboration.
- **Perks & benefits** (from [careers page](https://konghq.com/company/careers)):
  - Stock options for most employees
  - 4‑week paid sabbatical every 5 years
  - Flexible time off
  - Home office stipend
  - Regular “unplug days” (company‑wide long weekends)
  - Virtual events (Donut chats, trivia, fitness challenges)
- **Engineering culture** – values “owners, explorers, real, unstoppable” and encourages individual innovation. Focus on shipping fast and high trust.
- **Growth trajectory** – company is scaling (+23.5% headcount YoY) and is a unicorn with clear product‑market fit in a hot market (AI + API management).
- **Open roles** – 93 open positions across engineering, sales, solutions, customer success, and marketing.

## Sources
1. [konghq.com](https://konghq.com/)
2. [konghq.com/company/careers](https://konghq.com/company/careers)
3. [konghq.com/company/about-us](https://konghq.com/company/about-us)
4. [linkedin.com/company/konghq](https://www.linkedin.com/company/konghq)
5. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/kong](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/kong)

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