Strategic Account Director – PSU/Government

**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:** Kong is the AI Connectivity Company. We build the infrastructure that lets enterprises govern APIs and AI traffic at scale — and that infrastructure is becoming critical to how India's government and public sector modernize their systems. We're hiring an Account Executive to own a defined patch of PSU (Public Sector Undertaking) and Government accounts across India. You'll work the full government buying cycle — tenders, GeM listings, System Integrator relationships, empanelment — to bring Kong's platform into major public-sector modernization programs. This role is based in Delhi and reports to a Country Manager. **What You'll Do:** - **Own the sales cycle, government-style.** Lead deals from first conversation through RFP response, technical and financial bid submission, and contract award. Track PQ (pre-qualification) criteria, EMD requirements, and L1 bidding dynamics. Keep your pipeline accurate to what's actually documented in the tender process — not what looks good in a forecast. - **Work the ecosystem, not just the account.** Government and PSU deals rarely close direct. Build real relationships with the System Integrators (SIs) and OEM partners who carry the technical bid, and make sure Kong is positioned — and empanelled — before the tender drops. - **Navigate multiple stakeholders.** IT Secretaries, CTOs and CIOs at PSUs, nodal officers, procurement and finance committees — each has different priorities and a different definition of "done." Map them accurately and plan around all of them. - **Build account plans for your patch.** Identify which departments and PSUs are actively modernizing, where their budget cycles sit, and what a realistic path to close looks like. Then execute against it. - **Get fluent in the platform and the landscape.** Know Kong's API and AI governance platform well enough to defend it in a technical bid, and know where competitors are already empanelled. - **Meet your number.** Consistently hit quota. Government cycles are long — consistency across quarters matters more than any single deal. - **Bring in the rest of Kong early.** Loop in sales engineering, legal, and the channel team before compliance and certification requirements (STQC, data residency, MeitY empanelment) become a bottleneck late in the deal. - **Travel.** Expect real time in government offices and PSU sites across India. This is a relationship business, and relationships in this sector are built in person. **What You'll Bring:** - **8-12 years in B2B SaaS or enterprise technology sales, with direct experience selling into Indian government departments or PSUs.** This isn't optional — the public-sector buying process is different enough that generalist enterprise experience alone won't carry you. - **A track record of consistently hitting quota** (typically in the ₹2–5 Cr / $300K–$750K range) sold through longer, multi-stakeholder government cycles. - **Working knowledge of India's government tendering lifecycle** — GeM, RFP/RFI processes, technical and financial bids, PQ criteria, EMD — and how empanelment with bodies like MeitY or NIC actually works in practice. - **Established relationships with System Integrators and OEM partners** active in India's public-sector technology space. - **Process discipline and patience.** Government deals move on their own timeline. You bring structure to that timeline — you don't try to force it. - **Executive presence with senior government officials and PSU leadership**, along with the judgment to know when to push and when to wait. - **Ownership with collaboration.** You run your patch, but you know when to pull in your manager, sales engineering, or a partner. In the public sector, this isn't a solo sport. #LI-SP1 **About Kong:** 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 [](http://www.konghq.com).