Strategic Account Director – PSU/Government

About this role

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.