Senior Staff Product Manager, API Consumption

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.

Why this opportunity?

Join us to build Konnect, the next generation of API technology to power the connected world. Konnect is a SaaS platform that takes the complexity out of API management, enabling companies to easily build modern applications. 

A position on this team offers a fast-paced environment on an early product with a tight-knit team. Here you will be able to shape a new platform from its early years while delving into some of the most technically interesting problems. 

In this role, you will be building the API consumption experience at Kong, which allows our customers to offer world-class developer experience & productisation of their API products. You will build out API monetisation, and additional protocol support (Async API, GraphQL, gRPC, etc.), partner with the Gateway team to drive requirements related to API consumption, and work cross-functionally to ensure fluid feature delivery for your area. 

Who is a good fit? 

Kong is looking for a self-motivated product manager who bridges the business, design, and technical worlds. A good fit is a person who can both define vision, drive execution of a software product that is by developers and for developers, and can own their product area. 

If you thrive in positions with large scope and ownership, derive energy from both quantitative and qualitative research and synthesis, and feel fulfilled when you drive and launch the creation of a product that is used and loved by users, we encourage you to apply.

What is leadership like for this role? What is the structure and culture of the team like?

The hiring manager for this role is Ross Kukulinski, Vice President of Product Management, leading the Konnect product team. The Konnect team is made up of individuals with diverse backgrounds who are excited about delivering a new SaaS offering to enable Kong’s customers to operate, scale, and manage APIs in today’s modern application world.

What You'll Be Doing:

• Driving the overall strategy and roadmap for your area, including defining the priorities and tracking the success of the features.
• Managing a wide-breadth of deliverables that requires coordination across multiple engineering, design and product teams. 
• Establish product requirements based on an intimate knowledge of the specific target customers, the competitive landscape, and key data.
• Define and analyze metrics that inform the success of products. Identify and track key performance metrics.
• Work in a cross-functional and collaborative role spanning multiple teams including product, design, data & product analysts, engineering, sales, and professional services.
• Collaborating with other product owners, design, and engineering to bring your ideas to market through rapid iteration. 
• Be a technical, strong and eloquent product advocate that thinks API first. 
• Partner closely with design to create an efficient and straightforward user experience that delights users. 

What You'll Bring:

• Minimum qualifications: 
• Experience collaborating directly in git on things like docs, specs, and configuration
• Technical understanding of general credential management across multiple types of identity providers
• A desire to get hands on with operating and configuring Kong’s gateways and other products
• 4 years of Product Management experience, preferably in SaaS, enterprise software, or developer tooling
• Understanding of how B2B go-to-market motions work.
• Proven ability to: 
• build out product needs and determine research required to inform product decisions. 
• align and drive cross-functional work, particularly with engineering, through to completion.
• manage expectations cross-departmentally (included but not limited to executives, engineering, product, sales, marketing, and documentations) and orchestrate full-scale launch of new product features. 
• lead research that enables you and the team to develop deep empathy with users and design clean experiences that solve their problems in a technically efficient way. 
• synthesize findings and craft a compelling narrative that inspires those you work with on a regular basis. 
• form a sound strategy that guides prioritization in complex and ambiguous environments. 
• launch products with the field team and the ability to handle and engage in escalation conversations from customers and prospects. 
• High bar of excellence in output and execution including attention to detail, willingness to receive feedback and adjust, set commitment expectations and honor those commitments. 

Preferred qualifications:

• 2 years of working within a product or engineering capacity on a developer portal.
• Experience working with API products and developers as a primary product audience. 
• Familiarity with API billing. 
• Experience working on a platform with mission critical services that were easy for developers to build upon and extend. 

About Kong: 

Kong is THE cloud native API platform with the fastest, most adopted API gateway in the world (over 300m downloads!). Loved by developers and trusted with enterprises’ most critical traffic volumes, Kong helps startups and Fortune 500 companies build with confidence – allowing them to bring solutions to market faster with API and service connectivity that scales easily and securely. 

83% of web traffic today is API calls! APIs are the connective tissue of the cloud and the underlying technology that allows software to talk and interact with one another. Therefore, we believe that APIs act as the nervous system of the cloud. Our audacious mission is to build the nervous system that will safely and reliably connect all of humankind!

For more information about Kong, please visit konghq.com or follow @thekonginc on Twitter.

We are an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or veteran status.

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