Team Lead, Account Development Representatives

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.

Kong is hiring an ADR Team Lead to support our NEMEA region: the UK, Benelux, and Nordics. This is a player-coach role. You'll carry your own pipeline targets while taking an active hand in developing the team around you, especially the newer ADRs still finding their footing.

You'll work closely with, and report into, the Senior Manager for NEMEA. You're shaping how the team operates, not running it solo. Think of this as a high-impact individual contributor role with a leadership layer built in: the natural next step for an ADR who's ready to start making other people better, not just themselves.

Our NEMEA team is already strong. Driven, independent, hitting their numbers. What they need isn't more oversight. They need someone who sharpens how the team works, especially around process and tooling, while making sure newer reps get the support to ramp fast.

You'll report to Oscar Winberg. He moves fast, sets a high bar, and expects people to bring solutions, not just flag problems. He's direct, so you'll always know exactly where you stand, and he expects that same directness back: if you disagree, he wants the pushback, backed by data, not silence. Earn his trust and he'll hand you real ownership. What he won't do is hand-hold, so this role suits someone who'd rather be given room to run than told exactly what to do.

• Hands-on ADR or SDR experience. You know what this job feels like from the inside, not just what it looks like from a deck.

• A real coach's instinct. You get energy from making other people better, not just from hitting your own number.

• The ability to juggle competing priorities without dropping the ball. Your own quota, coaching newer reps, and process work will all pull on your time in the same week, and you know how to decide what actually matters right now.

• Strong time management. This is one we screen for directly, not something we assume comes with experience.

• A bias for building. You spot what needs fixing and go build it, rather than working only through a list of tasks someone else handed you.

• Analytical rigor. You make calls based on data, not gut feel, and you're comfortable being specific about why a number moved, including when that number is going the wrong way.

• You touch the line. Your metrics back it up: leading indicators (activity, sequence execution, pipeline hygiene) and lagging indicators (quota attainment, pipeline generated) that show a track record of real discipline, not one good quarter.

• Real trust with your AE and RD partners, earned through consistency, not just alignment on paper.

• Transparency, especially with leadership, especially when something isn't on track. We'd rather hear it early than find out later.

• The kind of presence the team actually looks up to, not just reports to.

• Comfort in an allbound model with a heavy outbound emphasis.

• Self-awareness and a genuine investment in growing as a leader.

• Language skills relevant to the UK, Benelux, or Nordics are a bonus, not a requirement.

We'll consider strong internal and external candidates. For external hires, the bar is high: we're looking for someone who brings something genuinely differentiated.

The EMEA SDR team are weather makers. We don't wait for opportunity, we create it. We're accountable, relentless, and we invest in each other like no other team does.

Kong Inc., the AI Connectivity Company, is building the connectivity layer of AI. Trusted by the Fortune 500® and AI-native startups alike, Kong’s unified API and AI platform enables organizations to secure, manage, accelerate, govern, and monetize the flow of intelligence across APIs and AI traffic — on any model, any cloud. For more information, visit www.konghq.com.