Are you ready to power the World's connections?
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:
You’ll be the first dedicated EMEA renewals leader, balancing hands-on ownership of a high-value renewal portfolio with building the foundation for a scalable practice. Your work directly protects and grows recurring revenue while the company moves to a highly efficient GTM motion. This is a rare opportunity to create a high-impact function at a pivotal moment in our company’s growth.
This is a rare opportunity to create a high-impact function at a pivotal moment in our company’s growth.
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Key Responsibilities:- Near-term (player)
- Personally manage a book of strategic renewals—forecast, negotiate, close.• Surface churn/expansion risks early and rally Sales, CS and Product for save plays.• Stand up core dashboards and a weekly renewal forecast call.• Create first-wave playbooks, email cadences and negotiation templates.
- Mid-term (coach)
- Hire and mentor a small team of Renewal Managers • Refine segmentation and touch models (high-touch, pooled, auto-renew).• Formalize policies (notice periods, co-terming, discounts) with Deal Desk & Finance.• Scale tooling—integrate CPQ, CS platform and billing for one-click quotes
- Build the EMEA Renewals Function: Stand up the EMEA renewals organization, including hiring, tooling, playbooks, segmentation, and KPIs — from foundational processes to scalable execution.
- Own the Renewals Number: Take full ownership of renewal forecasting, execution, and performance globally. Deliver predictable, efficient renewal motions across all segments and regions.
- Design the Renewal Strategy: Define policies, timing, roles, and customer touch models (high-touch, tech-touch, auto-renew) in partnership with Sales, CS, Product, and Finance.
- Drive Cross-Functional Alignment: Act as the central orchestrator across Sales, CS, RevOps, Deal Desk, and Legal to ensure renewals are proactively managed and friction is minimized.
- Optimize Commercial Outcomes: Create mechanisms to maximize retention, expansion, and margin through thoughtful negotiation strategies, renewal plays, and pricing levers.
- Develop Data-Driven Rigor: Define dashboards, forecasting cadences, and risk signals to ensure the business has full visibility into renewal health and churn risk.
- Scale Globally: Ensure consistency in process and tooling across regions while adapting for local market and customer nuances.
Qualifications:- Experience in SaaS renewals, account management or deal strategy;
- Experience leading or mentoring others
- Proven experience building and scaling a renewals function or adjacent team from scratch
- Deep understanding of SaaS unit economics, retention metrics, and customer lifecycle models
- Exceptional cross-functional collaboration skills — especially with Sales, CS, Product, Finance, and Legal
- Strong commercial acumen and a track record of hitting retention goals and driving upsell or margin improvements
- Process-oriented mindset with a bias for systems, automation, and scale
- Executive presence and communication skills; comfortable influencing C-level stakeholders
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About Kong:
Kong is THE cloud native API platform with the fastest, most adopted API gateway in the world (over 300m downloads!). As the innovation leader of cloud API technologies, Kong 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 to market.
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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