Partner Sales Director

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.

A strong partner ecosystem is crucial to the success and growth of Kong's business. Partners are a strategic imperative for Kong's continued growth and market expansion. As customer requirements become more complex, we need partners with the capability and capacity to help customers implement, support and grow their usage of Kong. We work closely with cross-functional leadership to ensure partners are integrated throughout the sales cycle, both pre- and post-sale.

The Partner Sales Director owns Kong's partner business within the DACH territory. That means recruiting the right partners, building a real go-to-market motion with them, and driving sourced incremental revenue, not slideware pipeline. The PSD is the single point of contact for anything partner-related: for field sellers who need partner help on a deal, for partners who need a path into Kong, and for leadership setting regional strategy. The ecosystem spans channel resellers, technology partners, GSIs, and hyperscalers (AWS, Azure, GCP), and the PSM works across all four. At the Intermediate level and above, this is a senior individual contributor role: the PSD runs their territory as their own business, in close partnership with the territory's sales leader.

Responsibilities

• Own the partner revenue number for your assigned territory. Sell Kong's full portfolio (products, renewals, professional services, and support) through and with focus partners.

• Build the joint go-to-market plan with your territory's sales team. Identify and sign new partners where there are gaps.

• Drive partner-sourced pipeline: set targets, run the cadence, and hold partners (and yourself) accountable to them, favoring net-new sourced business over tagging partners onto deals you'd close anyway.

• Drive partner-sourced and partner-influenced pipeline by coordinating deal registration, lead sharing, and co-selling motions for Kong Gateway, Kong AI Gateway, Kong Mesh, and Konnect.

• Build joint assets with focus partners, such as reference architectures, blueprints, and solution briefs that field teams on both sides actually use.

• Run joint marketing events that generate pipeline, not just logos on a banner.

• Get inside your partners' business: understand how they make money, where Kong fits, and what it takes to win together. Pull in the right cross-functional support (enablement, CX, marketing, ops) to make the projects land.

• Build a focus partner plan for your territory and execute it alongside sales engineering, SDRs, customer success, and marketing.

• Partner with and Partner Sales Engineers to ensure partners have the technical readiness needed to sell and deliver Kong solutions.

• Build, maintain, and manage relationships with the Kong field sales organization. Proactively engage with Kong AEs, ASMs and geo leadership.

• Coordinate and facilitate the involvement of Kong team members, including sales leadership and support, as needed to meet sales targets and partner sales objectives.

• Facilitate territory mapping and identification of new joint opportunities. Resolve route conflicts appropriately.

• Contribute to quarterly business reviews (QBRs) within your assigned territory, and participate in annual planning within the Partner organization.

• Provide weekly forecasts and/or progress reports, and keep partner and opportunity data current in Salesforce and other partner management systems.

• Escalate critical business issues to Partner Sales team management.

• Prepare presentations, territory plans and reports as required.

• Coordinate and collaborate with Finance, Partner Operations, Sales Operations, and Sales as needed.

Requirements

If you don't think you meet all of the criteria below but are still interested in the role, please apply. Nobody checks every box. We're looking for candidates who are particularly strong in a few areas, and have some interest and capabilities in others.

• 5+ years in partner, channel, or alliances sales, with a track record of driving go-to-market across channel, GSI, and hyperscaler partners

• A bias toward net-new, sourced business, not just tagging partners onto deals you'd close anyway

• Comfort running many partners and many activities in parallel without losing the thread on any of them

• Experience selling infrastructure, developer platforms, or API/AI technology to enterprise buyers

• Experience selling open source solutions

• Experience with B2B sales, deal registration, partner quoting, and co-selling motions

• Experience with Salesforce and partner management systems (e.g., Partner Portal)

• Effective written and verbal communication skills

• Strong interpersonal skills and an ability to remain calm under pressure

• Established personal network within the industry

• Results-oriented perspective

• Interest in Kong and open source software; ability to use Kong

• Shares Kong's values and works in accordance with them

• Ability to travel up to 50% and comply with the company's travel policy

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.