Director, Global Renewals - Remote US

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: We’re looking for a world-class, strategic leader to build and scale our Global Renewals organization from the ground up. This role is mission-critical to driving predictable revenue, maximizing customer lifetime value, and enabling our transition to a more efficient and scalable go-to-market engine. The Head of Global Renewals will partner across Sales, Customer Success, RevOps, and Finance to design and execute the global renewal strategy, ultimately owning the full lifecycle of renewals — from policy to execution. This is a rare opportunity to create a high-impact function at a pivotal moment in our company’s growth.

Key Responsibilities:

• Build the Global Renewals Function: Stand up the global 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:

• 10+ years of experience in revenue leadership, customer success, renewals, or deal strategy — preferably in SaaS or B2B enterprise environments
• 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

Kong has different base pay ranges for different work locations within the United States, which allows us to pay employees competitively and consistently in different geographic markets. Compensation varies depending on a wide array of factors, including but not limited to specific candidate location, role, skill set and level of experience. Certain roles are eligible for additional rewards including sales incentives depending on the terms of the applicable plan and role. Benefits may vary depending on location. US based employees are typically offered access to healthcare benefits, a 401(k) plan, short and long term disability benefits, basic life and AD&D insurance, among others. The normal base salary range for this role is $150k - $210K plu variable comp and equity. 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. #LI-RS1 #LI-DNI