Head of Design

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.
Are you ready to join the API revolution?Kong creates software and managed services that connect APIs and microservices natively across and within clouds, Kubernetes, data centers and more using intelligent automation. Built on an open source core, Kong’s service connectivity platform enables digital innovation by allowing organizations to reliably and securely manage the full lifecycle of APIs and services for modern architectures, including microservices, serverless and service mesh. By providing developer teams with unprecedented architectural freedom, Kong accelerates innovation cycles, increases productivity, and seamlessly bridges legacy and modern systems and applications.
About the role:As the Head of Design at Kong, you'll lead a strategic shift into product-led growth with the platform user experience as a driver of business value. You’ll take ownership of key end-to-end journeys across multiple products in the platform to drive greater adoption, engagement and revenue expansion. You will be a strategic visionary collaborating as an opinioned peer with product, engineering and business leaders. You'll sit on the product leadership team and be responsible for communicating the priorities of the product design team, defining goals and ensuring alignment to help establish a shared vision across the company.
Why should you want to work at Kong?  
Market Opportunity - We are on a quest to build a $10b+ software company over the next few years and need YOUR help!Why APIs Matter? APIs have been enabling innovation for decades!Strong VC team, Series D, strong year over year revenue growth!
Technical Leadership - We are recognized as the leader in innovation in the connectivity space.Marco, our CTO/co-founder - “We are the Cisco of L4 and L7” - CUBE Conversation, March 2021We are the leading innovator in the connectivity space!
Amazing Team & Culture - Come be a "Konger" and find out what we mean.Great Place to Work Certified in 2020 & 2021Kong employees exemplify our culture at our 2022 Sales Kickoff2022 Forbes Cloud 100 Honoree
Building Great Products - Learn why the world's largest companies love our tech!Kong Named in the Leaders Quadrant of the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for API Management for the Fourth Consecutive YearOver 250m+ downloads of our open source API gateway!  Over 40k+ stars on Github between Kong API and Kong Insomnia!

What you'll be doing:

• Plan, strategize, and envision key user journeys with product managers, engineers and other stakeholders
• Own the performance of key end-to-end user journeys across the Kong platform
• Re-found the design team for a new era of quality and cohesion leading all aspects of design across Kong’s product line, including our upcoming next generation SaaS connectivity platform
• Push the boundaries of what we deliver in terms of design quality.
• We care deeply about both product strategy and execution, and you will be involved in raising the standard for both.

What you bring:

• Demonstrable track record of improving the business impact of design teams and ushering in product-led growth
• Experience in leading strategic system thinking across a technical product space, developing user experience goals, and making decisions based on the impact to Kong’s users and the company's needs.
• You’re an organizer over an artist—both program and project management skills to transform defined customer needs and business goals into estimated plans with appropriate resources.
• Manager of manager experience and direct passion for coaching teams through the process of planning, navigating trade-offs, and creating me