Field CTO

Are you ready to power the World's connections?

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.

About the role

The Field CTO role at Kong is a high-impact position with responsibilities including supporting strategic sales opportunities with account teams, closely following industry trends and direction to shape engineering and product priorities, and to be a regular evangelist for Kong capabilities and roadmaps with customers, at industry conferences, tradeshows, and with industry press and analysts.

It is a unique role for the well-rounded technologist at heart, with experience in the API Lifecycle and Service Mesh areas, who takes pride in maintaining technical depth and breadth in their areas of expertise and in playing a highly influential role with our customers, our internal product and solution teams, as well as the industry at large.

The role requires dynamic and engaging communications and presentation skills; verbal, written and visual. The successful candidate is someone able to engage and influence a varied audience, from C-level to managerial, as well as internal product and engineering teams, and extract information that the sales team can use in future engagements.

Key Responsibilities

• Ability to interact with and influence senior executives within Kong's key Enterprise accounts, at both a strategic level with the C-suite, and at a deeper technical level with technical stakeholders.

• Ability to act as an industry thought leader in both customer meetings and public settings and be a key spokesperson in the region. The ideal candidate will be a well-rounded Subject Matter Expert (SME) who has the technical depth to confidently present in front of audiences of all sizes and invest time to help enable the Kong Field team when needed.

• Understand and communicate the value proposition of strategic and tactical concepts for complex industry use cases.

• Active role in providing real-world feedback to product teams to enhance the product, driving new features before they are released, and helping educate the sales organisation on key components of their focus area technology.

• Work cross-functionally with the sales, SE, CS, engineering and marketing teams to accelerate Kong's business and drive customer success.

• Stay close to industry trends to gain a deeper product understanding of the direction of API Management and Service Mesh technologies

• Help influence the open source community by contributing to open source articles, recordings, meetups etc.

Additional Responsibilities:

• Management and oversight of high-stakes deals and PoCs, Manage Alignment internally and externally to maximise the outcome of field engagements

• Develop and execute technical engagement strategies for key enterprise accounts to drive product adoption and expansion.

• Serve as a trusted advisor to C-level executives and technical stakeholders, providing insights on industry trends and Kong's strategic direction.

• Collaborate with product management to identify and prioritise new features and enhancements based on customer feedback and market opportunities specific to the region.

• Lead technical workshops and training sessions for customers and partners to enable them to effectively use Kongs technologies.

• Represent Kong at industry events and conferences, delivering technical presentations and demonstrations to showcase Kong's capabilities.

• Work closely with the sales and marketing teams to develop and deliver compelling technical content, including white papers, case studies, and blog posts.

• Establish and maintain relationships with key influencers and thought leaders in the API management and service mesh space to promote Kong's brand and technology.

• Provide technical guidance and support to the sales team during the sales process, including product demonstrations, technical deep dives, and proof-of-concept (POC) engagements.

• Understand the customer & business model and the specific industry that the customer is in.
  
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About Kong:

Kong Inc., a leading developer of cloud API technologies, is on a mission to enable companies around the world to become "API-first" and securely accelerate AI adoption. Kong helps organizations globally — from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises — unleash developer productivity, build securely, and accelerate time to market. For more information about Kong, please visit or follow us on X @thekonginc.