Customer Assurance Senior Manager

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: Kong is establishing a global Customer Assurance team that will play an important role in helping Kong gain and keep the trust of its customers around the world with respect to its information security, operational resilience and data governance practices. Reporting to Kong’s US-based Director, GRC, the Customer Assurance Senior Manager will be the first hire into this India-based team, and will play an important role in helping build the team.

Responsibilities

• Manage Customer Assurance :Oversee customer assurance initiatives, focusing on completing customer security questionnaires, RFP security sections, certification documentation sharing, and other due diligence requests to build trust in Kong's product and service security.Lead the customer assurance team and communicate program issues to leadership as needed.Ensure a deep understanding of the product and maintain a well-organized library of resources.
• Coordinate Cross-Functional Responses:Serve as the primary point of contact for customer security and compliance inquiries.Collaborate with internal teams (Compliance, Security, Engineering, Legal, etc.) to gather necessary information and provide thorough, prompt and accurate responses to customer questionnaires and inquiries.
• Develop Scalable Processes:Create and refine processes to efficiently handle questionnaire completion and information security inquiry responses.Maintain a repository of standard answers, templates, and documentation to enhance efficiency and consistency.Leverage tools or automation to manage repetitive questionnaire content.
• Proactive Customer Assurance:Produce and maintain customer-facing security documentation and collateral (such as FAQ and trust portal content).Anticipate and address common customer questions proactively to build trust.
• Cross-Department Collaboration: Work closely with global Sales and Customer Success teams during pre-sales and renewal cycles to address security and compliance questions.Attend customer calls as the company’s Customer Assurance representative, providing clear explanations of our security posture and practices to shorten sales cycles and reassure customers.
• Program Monitoring and Improvement:Track and report on customer assurance activities and metrics (such as questionnaire turnaround times, common security concerns, and customer feedback).Use these insights to continuously improve the customer assurance program, streamlining workflows, enhancing answer quality, and maintaining thorough and timely communication.

Required Qualifications:

• Experience: Over 5 years of experience in information security or compliance, with substantial involvement in security assurance or GRC programs. At least 1 year of experience in a customer-facing role, such as responding to client security questionnaires or participating in trust-building activities. Total professional experience is less than 15 years.
• Security Knowledge:Understanding of security and compliance frameworks/standards (such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, NIST, GDPR, CCPA).Working knowledge of cloud security principles and IT controls related to SaaS environments.
• Technical Skills:Expertise with cloud platforms such as GCP, Azure, or AWS, as well as containerization technologies like Docker and Kubernetes. Strong background in SaaS security.
• Non-Technical Skills:Experienced in creating clear and accessible documentation that explains complex technical scenarios to non-technical audiences.
• Process Management:Ability to manage multiple requests simultaneously and meet deadlines.Experience maturing customer assurance processes, such as implementing tools for security questionnaire automation or knowledge bases.Experience developing or improving processes to increase efficiency is a plus.
• Communication Skills:Ability to translate complex security concepts into clear, customer-friendly written and verbal communication.Comfortable interacting with enterprise customers and internal stakeholders.
• Collaboration:Ability to collaborate effectively with diverse groups (engineering, legal, sales, etc.) through proactive and customer-service-focused approaches.
• Education:Bachelor’s degree in Information Security, Computer Science, or a related field (or equivalent work experience).
• This opportunity requires you to work from our office in Bangalore, India in a hybrid manner with three days in the office and Two days working from home.

Preferred Qualifications

• Certifications:Professional certifications such as CISSP or CISA (preferred but not required).
• SaaS/Industry Experience:Experience working in a SaaS company, especially in cloud services or API management.

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.