Enterprise Account Executive - Growth (SFO)

Kong•Sacramento, CA

8d•$260,000 - $320,000

About The Position

Kong is hiring an Enterprise Account Executive for its Growth team to convert existing open-source and developer adoption into strategic, multi-year enterprise platform commitments. The role involves selling Kong Konnect, AI Gateway, and Service Mesh to enterprise customers and managing complex, multi-threaded sales cycles, including deals with ACVs of $100,000 to more than $1 million. The position engages technical and executive stakeholders such as engineers, architects, CTOs, VPs of Platform or Engineering, and CISOs, with a focus on API traffic, cloud-native architectures, microservices, and AI workloads. The Enterprise Account Executive owns the full sales cycle and territory, from initial outreach and pipeline creation through negotiation and close. The role is supported by Solutions Engineers, SDRs, Customer Success, and Kong’s developer community. Customer feedback is shared with product and marketing teams, and the representative may attend industry events, conferences, and customer meetings. Kong describes its culture as autonomous, fast-moving, and low on bureaucracy.

Requirements

At least 5 years of full-cycle closing experience with mid-market and enterprise customers, including organizations with more than 1,000 employees.
Consistent quota overachievement.
Direct experience in modern B2B SaaS or infrastructure.
Ability to engage both technical champions and executive economic buyers.
Disciplined use of MEDDPICC or Command of the Message for pipeline generation, forecasting, and deal execution.
Consultative selling skills, including customer discovery, business-outcome alignment, and tailored demonstrations.
Comfort with high-stakes negotiations and ability to build lasting relationships.
Account research skills and discipline maintaining Salesforce or a similar CRM.
Ownership mindset and adaptability in a fast-moving environment.

Nice To Haves

Experience with commercial open source (COSS), developer platforms, cloud or networking, APIs, Kubernetes, or observability.

Responsibilities

Own the territory, pipeline, and full sales cycle from first outreach through negotiation and close.
Convert open-source and developer adoption into strategic, multi-year enterprise platform commitments.
Run complex, multi-threaded enterprise sales cycles across technical and executive stakeholders.
Generate pipeline, forecast accurately, and execute deals using a disciplined MEDDPICC or Command of the Message approach.
Conduct consultative discovery, identify customer problems, connect solutions to business outcomes, and tailor demonstrations.
Research accounts and industry trends and maintain current Salesforce or similar CRM records.
Build durable customer relationships through high-stakes negotiations and beyond contract signature.
Share customer insights with product and marketing teams.
Represent Kong at industry events, conferences, and customer meetings.