[Hiring] Director Partner Programs & Operations Manager @Kong

Role 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.

Partners are one of Kong's biggest levers for AI Gateway pipeline and bookings, and our partner business is growing fast. Kong is hiring a Director, Partner Operations to build the operating model that helps it scale.

You'll be the operating partner to the Ecosystem VP and Partner Sales leaders, sitting in Revenue Operations. You own how partner business flows through Kong — registration, deal structure, attribution, crediting, and payout — and you bring an AI-first mindset to how it runs.

• Business partner to Ecosystem leadership
• Partner GTM strategy & planning
• Rules of engagement, deal registration & attribution
• Partner lead & deal workflows
• Partner deal execution
• Partner compensation & crediting
• Manage cloud marketplace operations
• Performance insights & data quality
• Partner marketing measurement & MDF
• Operational playbooks & enablement
• Systems & data architecture
• AI & automation roadmap
• Lean, high-output team

Qualifications

• 10+ years in Partner or Channel Operations, Revenue Operations, or Sales Strategy & Operations at a B2B SaaS or infrastructure software company
• 3+ years leading partner operations with direct ownership of deal registration, rules of engagement, and partner attribution
• 3+ years experience operating a multi-type, multi-region partner ecosystem: GSIs, regional SIs, resellers, distributors, ISVs, and hyperscalers
• Hands-on partner deal execution end to end: resale, referral, and cloud marketplace transactions, partner discounting, and order form requirements - in partnership with Deal Desk and Finance
• 3+ years experience leading partner planning: targets, quota, capacity, and coverage and designing channel-neutral crediting with Incentive Compensation
• Proven track record as a trusted advisor to VP-level Partner or Sales leaders
• Deep Salesforce fluency (opportunity design, sourcing fields, reporting) plus PRM and BI tools, and hands-on use of AI tools to automate ops workflows

Requirements

• Preferred experience with hyperscaler co-sell and marketplace mechanics: AWS ACE and ISV Accelerate, Marketplace private offers, Microsoft co-sell, and Google Cloud Partner Advantage
• Experience supporting a shift to usage-based or consumption pricing and reflecting it in partner deal structures and crediting
• Experience leading a team from building processes to running them at scale
• API, cloud infrastructure, or AI platform experience

Company Description

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 .