The posting
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 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.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
Carry your own number. You'll hit your own pipeline targets as an active ADR. Your activity and results set the standard for everyone watching. You'll contribute to weekly forecasting alongside the Senior Manager.
Support newer ADRs. You'll be the first point of contact for less tenured reps, helping them ramp faster and build good habits early. You'll help with onboarding alongside the Senior Manager and Enablement, and run regular 1:1s with newer ADRs. Different reps need different things from you, so you'll read where each person is and adjust your coaching accordingly rather than running the same playbook on everyone. You'll help build individual development plans grounded in a real read of each rep's attitude, process, and results, and you'll flag underperformance early, with context, instead of letting it fester.
Coach and upskill the team. You'll support team coaching sessions: live dialling, pitch practice, feedback loops. You'll run or contribute to upskilling initiatives, on your own or with Enablement. You'll share what's working, best practices, sequences, outbound approaches, with the wider team, and give direct, specific feedback often, recognizing strong work and not letting bad habits slide.
Sharpen process and tooling. You'll help spot where the team's workflows and tooling could run more efficiently, and support the Senior Manager in rolling out improvements without stripping reps of their autonomy. You'll be the go-to person for best practice on Salesforce, Outreach, and the team's automation tools.
Contribute to the wider GTM motion. You'll keep strong alignment with your AE partners and take part in pipe review cadences. You'll support the Senior Manager in preparing performance updates and regional insights, and join bi-weekly RD cadences where it makes sense.
WHAT YOU'LL BRING
- 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.
- A track record of top-tier performance that holds up on both counts: the day-to-day discipline that drives it (activity, sequence execution, pipeline hygiene), and the results that discipline produces, quarter over quarter, not just once.
- 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.
CULTURE AND VALUES
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.
- Relentless. Energy and intention every day. Every challenge is a chance to get stronger.
- Character. Good humans first. Integrity, humility, and keeping our word.
- Together. No one gets left behind. Differences make us better, not harder to manage.
- Truth. Radical honesty. We say the hard things with care. That's how we move fast.
- Accountable. We own our results, bias toward action, and don't wait to be told.
- Pioneering. We take up space, experiment, and bring creative thinking to every challenge.
In NEMEA specifically, we operate in mature markets. We don't manufacture urgency, we earn entry by knowing the landscape better than the prospect does. We're pipeline gardeners: patient, precise, persistent.
"We don't book meetings. We build pipeline."
This role is a genuine development opportunity. For the right person, it's the foundation of a leadership career at Kong.
#LI-TR1
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 www.konghq.com http://www.konghq.com.
