Solution Architect

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

We are looking for an experienced Solution Architect, to help craft and execute technical strategies to drive our customers’ adoption and use of our API Management platform and eventually to keep their environments operationally healthy. The SA team will serve as the technical champion for many of our enterprise customers. Your technical acumen and customer-facing skills will enable you to effectively represent Kong within a customer’s environment.

You will function as the primary point of contact for all technical, product and support questions on a day-to-day basis and will coordinate with & leverage the various Kong teams to ensure your customers’ success. The close relationships developed with your customers will allow you to understand their business/operational/technical needs & challenges, and help them achieve the greatest value from Kong. This role will give you an opportunity to help enterprises accelerate their digital transformation initiatives. This position will require the ability to travel up to 25% dependant on requirements.

We will be able to hire in the UK, France and Sweden for this role.

Why should you want to work at Kong?

Market Opportunity - We are on a quest to build a $10b+ software company over the next few years and need YOUR help!

Why APIs Matter? APIs have been enabling innovation for decades!

Strong VC team, Series D, strong year over year revenue growth!

Technical Leadership - We are recognized as the leader in innovation in the connectivity space.

Marco, our CTO/co-founder - “We are the Cisco of L4 and L7” - CUBE Conversation, March 2021

We are the leading innovator in the connectivity space!

Amazing Team & Culture - Come be a "Konger" and find out what we mean.

Great Place to Work Certified in 2020 & 2021

Kong employees exemplify our culture at our 2022 Sales Kickoff

Building Great Products - Learn why the world's largest companies love our tech!

Kong Named a Leader in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant

Over 250m+ downloads of our open source API gateway! Over 40k+ stars on Github between Kong API and Kong Insomnia!

What you will do:

• Ensure constant communication with customers and emerge as customer’s trusted technical advisor and a partner
• Establish business value for customers and help them achieve the targets and ROI
• Responsible for customer’s renewal and expansion. To that effect, explore new use cases and expand Kong’s API platform usage
• Understand, advocate and document customer’s use case, architecture and roadmap
• Effectively manage the tracking and resolution of customer escalations on behalf of product and services
• Champion and advocate for the customer within Kong. Articulate and follow up with Engineering and Product Management on customers’ product features and future roadmap needs and address them actively
• Manage customer accounts with Kong’s customer maturity model framework
• Periodic review of Kong implementation and walk through best practices
• And any additional tasks required by manager

What you’ll bring:

• 5+ years of demonstrated experience handling enterprise customers of all sizes in Technical Account Management, Technical Support and/or Professional Services functions in a Software/SaaS company
• Strong desire to tackle hard technical problems and proven ability do so with little or no direct daily supervision
• Excellent communication skills and an ability to concisely explain complex technical issues and solutions
• Prior Experience working on one or more Cloud computing platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP, etc.) and/or in Unix environment
• Prior experience administering/interacting with an API management platform(s)
• Prior experience or knowledge of databases such as MySQL, MongoDB, etc.
• Prior experience or knowledge in container technologies (e.g. Docker) and Kubernetes
• Knowledge of DevOps (CI/CD, Jenkins, Chef, Travis, etc.), Security fundamentals (OAuth, OpenID specifications, etc.) & Networking fundamentals (OSI Layer model)
• Software development experience in one or more programming languages such as Java, Python, or Lua (plus)
• Prior experience working for a technology startup (plus)
• Ability to travel up to 25% of the time to meet with your accounts