Staff Engagement Manager
Trenton, NJ - USA
Job Summary
Are you ready to unlock intelligence
If you dont think you meet all of the criteria below but are still interested in the job please apply. Nobody checks every box - were looking for candidates that are particularly strong in a few areas and have some interest and capabilities in others.
For this role we are looking for a US Citizen who can support Government/Public Sector Customers.
About the Role:
We are looking for an Engagement Manager to join the growing Professional Services team at Kong. As an Engagement Manager you will have the opportunity to work across the entire customer lifecycle to drive a prescriptive outcome(s) and successful delivery of engagements and programs for key customers.
The engagement manager will ensure our customers are getting the most value out of Kong products and will help prepare manage and deliver strategic engagements across the defined install base. As a primary professional services contact and ambassador for our customers the engagement manager is a strategic long-term relationship-based customer-facing role. Apart from driving successful delivery of services engagements the Engagement Manager will focus on driving day to day professional services operations.
This is an important role and requires someone with very strong thought organization and communication skills along with the ability to multitask context switch and manage customer escalations. Working at Kong presents a unique opportunity to help customers modernize their approach to IT to embrace Cloud Native development principles.
What Youll Do:
Customer Delivery
Own and lead selected simultaneous billable customer engagements and manage customer expectations and drive prescriptive outcomes during the entire customer lifecycle (Post Sales Delivery and Value Realization)
Work with customers and stakeholders to understand and analyze engagement scope requirements time cost benefits etc. Drive the engagement lifecycle end to end to deliver business outcomes
Own and drive project management activities and oversee completion of engagement kickoffs project charters and deliverables managing schedules meeting milestones and ensuring success throughout the engagement lifecycle end to end to deliver business outcomes
Prepare customer-facing and internal collateral such as solution presentations blueprints reusable artifacts project plans burndown and status reports
Identify prioritize and own resolution of internal and customer escalations & project risks driving an effective resolution across technical business and executive stakeholders.
Makes use of productivity tools like FinancialForce Salesforce Metabase Trello etc. to maintain and manage programs of multiple onboarding and implementation projects along with reporting on key business metrics (Billings Utilizations Resource Capacity and Forecasting)
Professional Services Operations
Assist Services leadership team with resource assignment and management in Financial Force.
Ensure timely completion of Month and Quarter end close process and complete new PS employee onboarding with content tailored to the new hires positions
Coordinate with cross functional teams to obtain relevant data about the project opportunity and staffing requirements
Become a subject matter expert for services personnel on all processes related to services revenue: time entry project management processes relate to operations customer billing and staff utilization.
Continually provide suggestions and implement improvements to business and reporting processes that keep up with the changes in the organization.
Support Professional Services staff to better understand revenue hours and target attainment goals
What Youll Bring:
Strong project/program management and services delivery experience with a track record of delivery for strategic customers on time and within budget
Deep experience working with project financial fundamentals and PSA tools such as Financial Force to own and drive operational activities(Reporting Forecasting and Tracking)
Excellent customer-facing skills and ability to communicate with executives as well as other stakeholders at customer sites and cross-functionally within Kong. Ability to demonstrate relationship building internally and externally
Exceptional organizational and change management skills with an ability to manage competing client demands
Excellent presentation skills along with a strong understanding of professional services business metrics in a SaaS software environment. Ability to manage critical and political situations with business stakeholders with strong interpersonal skills
Proven team player and team builder who loves to work in a fast-growing and roll up their sleeves in a dynamic environment and is able to keep pace with constant change.
#LI-KH1
About Kong:
Kong Inc. a leading developer of API and AI connectivity technologies is building the infrastructure that powers the agentic era. Trusted by the Fortune 500 and startups alike Kongs unified API and AI platform Kong Konnect enables organizations to secure manage accelerate govern and monetize the flow of intelligence across APIs and AI models. For more information visit .
Required Experience:
Staff IC
About Company
Kong is the most widely adopted API gateway and service mesh, powering the world’s APIs for modern architectures. Accelerate development and productivity today!