Senior Product Marketing Manager - API and Event Management

Are you ready to unlock intelligence? 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 are looking for a technically-minded Senior Product Marketing Manager to help Kong own the AI connectivity category. You will work with the Director of Product Marketing to craft the narrative around Kong’s AI connectivity platform - focusing on Kong’s market leading API Gateway and Event Gateway - to translate complex application infrastructure concepts into compelling stories for technical and business buyers alike. You will serve as a strategic partner to Product, Field, Partnerships, and Solutions Engineering teams, helping them win in a fast-moving market where AI connectivity is becoming the new battleground. You have deep familiarity with the Data infrastructure landscape, understand how enterprises govern and operationalize AI, and can connect Kong’s platform capabilities to the real-world challenges of connectivity platform builders and operators. What You’ll Do: - Help shape the narrative for Kong’s API + Event Management products by developing positioning, messaging, and content that resonates with platform engineers, eventing teams, architects, and enterprise buyers - Become a product expert across API and Event Management products; understand the technology and API + Event Management best practices. - Develop and maintain seller content including solution briefs, white papers, battlecards, and keynote stories that articulate Kong’s differentiation in the AI connectivity space - Act as a thought leader in the API and Event management space; represent Kong in analyst briefings, industry events, customer advisory boards, and conference keynotes - Collaborate with Product to shape the roadmap by bringing market intelligence, customer feedback, and competitive insights into the prioritization process - Partner with Field Enablement to build sales plays, pitch frameworks, and competitive positioning that equips AEs and SEs - Work closely with Demand Gen and Content teams to develop integrated campaigns that generate pipeline in focused accounts and personas - Monitor the competitive landscape across API management and Event management tooling vendors; develop proactive counter-positioning and win/loss analysis What You'll bring to Kong: - 5+ years of product marketing experience, with at least 2 years in developer infrastructure, API management, cloud-native, or data streaming technologies. - Proven ability to translate complex technical concepts into crisp narratives that land with both technical practitioners and C-suite buyers - Track record of developing product launches, sales enablement materials, and competitive intelligence programs that move pipeline and accelerate deals - Highly collaborative—you thrive working across Product, Marketing, Field, and Developer Relations; you influence without authority and build trust through expertise and follow-through - Comfortable owning a stage: keynote presentations, analyst briefings, customer roundtables, and demo-heavy sessions are energizing, not intimidating - Experience in open-source software, SaaS platforms, and enterprise go-to-market motions strongly preferred - Familiarity with the API connectivity and Event landscape—including awareness of competing and complementary vendors across API gateways, AI observability, vector databases, IPaaS, and agentic orchestration frameworks—is a strong plus #LI-KH1 About Kong: Kong Inc., a leading developer of API and AI connectivity technologies, is building the infrastructure that powers the agentic era. Trusted by the Fortune 500 and startups alike, Kong's unified API and AI platform, Kong Konnect, enables organizations to secure, manage, accelerate, govern, and monetize the flow of intelligence across APIs and AI mod