Commercial Sales Director - EMEA

Are you ready to power the World's connections?

Why should you want to work at Kong?  

Market Opportunity - We are on a quest to build a $10b+ software company over the next few years and need YOUR help! Why APIs Matter? APIs have been enabling innovation for decades! Strong VC team, Series D, strong year over year revenue growth!

Technical Leadership - We are recognized as the leader in innovation in the connectivity space. Marco, our CTO/co-founder - “We are the Cisco of L4 and L7” - CUBE Conversation, March 2021 We are the leading innovator in the connectivity space!

Amazing Team & Culture - Come be a "Konger" and find out what we mean. Great Place to Work Certified in 2020 & 2021 Kong employees exemplify our culture at our 2022 Sales Kickoff 2022 Forbes Cloud 100 Honoree

Building Great Products - Learn why the world's largest companies love our tech! Kong Named in the Leaders Quadrant of the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for API Management for the Fourth Consecutive Year Over 250m+ downloads of our open source API gateway!  Over 40k+ stars on Github between Kong API and Kong Insomnia!

About the role:

• Lead and mentor a fast-growing team of Commercial account executives.
• Work closely with the Vice President of Sales to drive Kong’s success by adding new sales opportunities to the pipeline and closing them.
• Develop and execute strategic sales plans to achieve sales targets and expand our customer base in the region. -Lead and mentor the regional sales team, setting performance standards, and monitoring progress.
• Build and maintain strong, long-lasting customer relationships, understanding their unique needs and how Kong’s solutions can meet them.
• Partner closely with the marketing team to identify and target key accounts, and to craft compelling value propositions for Kong’s solutions.
• Collaborate with the product team to relay customer feedback and ensure our solutions are aligned with market demands.
• Negotiate contracts and close agreements to maximize profits while maintaining Kong’s standard of excellence.
• Understand the competitive market landscape and position Kong’s solutions effectively.
• Represent Kong at industry conferences, tradeshows, and networking events to enhance brand visibility and generate leads.
• Provide detailed and accurate sales forecasting, leveraging Kong’s CRM tools for sales reporting and pipeline management.
• Recruit, onboard and ramp up new hires effectively
• And any additional tasks required by the manager.

What you'll bring to Kong:

• Minimum of 10 years of sales experience in the technology sector, with at least 2 years in a leadership role in a startup environment.
• Strong understanding of the API management space, cloud services, and the broader technology landscape.
• Experience building and leading high-performance sales teams at a high-growth SaaS company, selling a complex technical product and, ideally, experience selling inside of a consumption-based revenue model.
• Experience in successfully selling SaaS solutions in a field sales capacity.
• Experience accurately forecasting and managing pipelines. A history of scaling teams quickly, with knowledge of effectively recruiting, training and ramping new hires.
• The ability to work cross-functionally, partnering closely with marketing, enablement, operations and other organisations within the company.
• Outstanding verbal and written communication skills.
• Strong understanding of the API management space, cloud services, and the broader technology landscape.