Director Partner Programs & Operations Manager

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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.

Key responsibilities:

• Business partner to Ecosystem leadership
• Serve as the strategic and operational partner to the Ecosystem VP and Partner Sales leaders across theaters. Run an AI-assisted operating cadence — forecast and pipeline reviews, QBRs, and executive reporting — where the prep is automated and meetings go to decisions. Facilitate cross-functional alignment on people, then process, then systems, so changes are agreed before they are configured.

• Partner GTM strategy & planning
• Lead annual and quarterly planning for the partner organization, including targets, capacity, and coverage. Help build a business that maximizes the impact of partner investments and resources.

• Rules of engagement, deal registration & attribution
• Own the rules that govern how partner deals are registered, protected, sourced, and credited, including sourced vs. influenced credit, lookback windows, and the line between partner credit and partner marketing credit. Encode them into systems and agents so they apply automatically.

Partner lead & deal workflows: Define and own how partner-touched leads and deals move between ADR, PSD, and AE, including routing, SLAs, and prioritization. Cover partner event leads, prospective partners, existing partners, and deal registrations, and give PSDs one view of the leads that need their action.

• Partner deal execution
• Partner with Deal Desk, Finance, and Legal to make partner deals easy to structure, discount, and book across resale, referral, and cloud marketplace routes

• Partner compensation & crediting
• Partner with Incentive Compensation on channel-neutral crediting and referral fees, so sellers choose the best route to market.

Manage cloud marketplace operations: Own Kong’s cloud marketplace operations across AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, including listings, private offers, channel partner private offers (CPPOs), and co-sell registration. Lead the launch of marketplaces in new regions, and manage marketplace dynamics with Deal Desk, Finance, and the cloud alliances team, including fees, customer commit drawdown, and partner involvement on marketplace deals.

• Performance insights & data quality
• Define and report the partner KPIs that matter, give every partner leader a run-the-business view, and keep partner data accurate.

• Partner marketing measurement & MDF
• Work closely with Partner Marketing and Marketing Ops to define how partner marketing is measured. Tie MDF and event spend to registered deals by capturing funding source on deal registrations, and report sourced and influenced pipeline separately.
• Operational playbooks & enablement
• Build and maintain the partner operations handbook and repeatable workflows, from partner onboarding to software access, including prospective partner intake and ADR and PSD training on routing rules, so every seller knows the process on day one.

• Systems & data architecture
• Own partner data design and routing rules. That includes partner account structure, alignment of deal registration approval with lead routing, and alerts when opportunities open on partner accounts. Evaluate whether the PRM remains the right long-term fit.

• AI & automation roadmap
• Own the Partner Operations AI roadmap: find the highest-leverage workflows, build or buy the agents and automations, and measure the hours returned to the field. Own business requirements for partner tooling across Salesforce, PRM, and CPQ.

• Lean, high-output team
• Build a small team of AI-native operators, and work across Sales, Marketing, Finance, Legal, and Customer Success to drive change as the ecosystem scales.

Required Experience:

10+ years in Partner or Channel Operations, Revenue Operations, or Sales Strategy & Operations at a B2B SaaS or infrastructure software company, i ncluding 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 , with the presence to hold a governance line and the judgment to know when to evolve it.

Deep Salesforce fluency (opportunity design, sourcing fields, reporting) plus PRM and BI tools, and hands-on use of AI tools to automate ops workflows.

Preferred experience:

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.

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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 .