Director, Customer Success - East Region

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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.

About This Role

As the Director of Customer Success Management (CSM) for AMER East, you will be a critical, hands-on leader responsible for the health, growth, and retention of our entire customer portfolio across Strategic, Enterprise, and Commercial segments. You will be responsible for building and coaching a high-performing team of technical CSMs focused on accelerating platform adoption and proving the quantifiable business value of Kong’s solutions.

As a Director, Customer Success You Will

• Team Leadership & Talent Development
• Build and Lead: Recruit, hire, and coach a world-class team of Technical CSMs capable of engaging customers on API strategy, cloud migration, and complex integration patterns.
• Performance Management: Manage team performance, provide continuous coaching, and ensure high quality across all CSM deliverables (Success Plans, QBRs, BVRs).
• Mentorship: Actively develop the team's ability to engage with C-suite and VP-level technical leaders to drive strategic alignment.
• Account Health & Risk Mitigation
• Portfolio Management: Own the overall AMER East book of business, ensuring all customers are progressing through their adoption journey and realizing measurable business value from Kong.
• Risk Mitigation: Implement and enforce standardized risk management processes and playbooks, ensuring the team can identify and mitigate churn risk early—especially in the critical post-onboarding/adoption phases.
• Executive Visibility: Maintain a clear, objective view of the portfolio's health score distribution and proactively brief leadership on major risks and mitigation efforts.
• Revenue Partnership & Growth
• Renewal Ownership: Partner directly with Sales leadership (AEs/RSDs) to manage the renewal forecast, driving strategy on all high-value and at-risk renewals.
• Expansion Plays: Align the CSM team to actively identify and qualify expansion signals (consumption overages, new use cases, product adoption gaps) to contribute directly to Net Revenue Retention (NRR).
• GTM Alignment: Serve as the primary CS liaison for AMER East Sales leadership, ensuring seamless customer handoffs and clear segmentation rules across all tiers.
• Cross-Functional Influence & Voice of Customer (VoC)
• Product Feedback Loop: Partner closely with Product and Engineering to represent the Voice of the Customer (VoC), ensuring critical feature needs and pain points are integrated into the product roadmap.
• Service Alignment: Collaborate with Professional Services (PS) leadership to ensure seamless scoping, handoffs, and resource allocation to support complex customer implementations.
  
  

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 www.konghq.com or follow us on X @thekonginc.

Compensation Range: $250K - $300K