Strategic Events Manager, APJ

About the Role

Abnormal is growing fast, and the way we show up in the world has to keep pace. Our Strategic Events are where our story stops being a pitch and starts being an experience - where CISOs and practitioners walk in curious and walk out convinced. This role owns event execution and delivery across the APAC Strategic Events program - major third-party events, flagship first-party events, and high-profile executive programs - with support from the wider international team.

As Strategic Events Manager, you'll play a central role in shaping our regional events strategy and decision-making, bringing local expertise on how events should land with a local-first approach, and sharp insight into the must-attend industry events across APAC. You'll operate independently on the day-to-day, while partnering closely with sales leadership, regional revenue marketing, sales engineering, channel team managers, and a wide range of other stakeholders to get there.

We're looking for someone who brings new ideas, critical thinking, and the judgement to drive strategic events that move pipeline forward. You're as comfortable owning execution on the ground as you are shaping the plan behind it, and you bring the same rigour to post-event analysis - turning results into clear, data-backed recommendations that sharpen the program year on year.

This is an individual-contributor role: no direct reports, but full accountability for a regional portfolio, a real budget, and the standards that go with it - the autonomy to run your own show, backed by a team when it matters most. If that sounds like your kind of ownership, we'd love to hear from you!

How You'll Deliver Impact

Project Management, Event Logistics & Vendor Management

• Manage all event logistics end to end and take full ownership of deadlines, project plans, problem-solving, and stakeholder management and communication.
• Manage venues, exhibition requirements, staff schedules, booth logistics, catering, AV, shipping, accommodation, signage and meeting-space requirements across multiple regions.
• Source and manage agencies, venues, production partners and suppliers at regional scale, including contracts and negotiation.
• Build run-of-shows, timelines and contingency plans across multiple concurrent events and markets.
• Coordinate invitation strategy, registration, attendee communications and internal promotion so the right people show up, market by market.

Regional Strategy & Portfolio Support

• Support the APAC strategic event mapping and calendar planning, prioritising investment against pipeline and account-engagement goals.
• Help decide which events are worth the budget, and advocate for the portfolio with regional and global leadership.
• Understand target accounts, ICP and GTM priorities for each market, and tailor the regional activation strategy accordingly.

Internal Cross-Functional & Partner/Alliance Collaboration

• Partner with Regional Revenue Marketing, Sales, SDR/BDR, Customer Marketing, Sales Engineering, Partner/Alliance Marketing and Brand/Creative across regions and time zones.
• Develop and maintain regional partner and tech-alliance event engagement, including co-sponsored and co-hosted activations - this may include building sponsor prospectuses for hosted events and defining sponsorship packages for our global alliances.
• Work closely with your Revenue Marketing Manager team to ensure Sales are fully enabled on all event details and what is expected of them.
• Maintain a strong network of reliable vendors and agencies.

Budget Ownership & ROI Tracking

• Manage event budgets to ensure we stay within budget while getting the most value for our money.
• Budget admin, including raising purchase orders, submitting invoices, and updating budget management tools.
• Negotiate to secure the best rates and contract terms.

On-Site Execution

• Lead on-site execution for flagship regional events, directing any temporary or contract event staff and troubleshooting in real time.
• Train other on-site team members, including coordinating and leading staff orientations.
• Set clear expectations on-site for all teams.

Post-Event Follow-Up & Program Result Accountability

• Own lead capture, CRM hygiene and pipeline forecasting tied to event performance across the region, and report regional ROI to leadership.
• Build repeatable regional playbooks and share best practice with peers across the broader Strategic Events team, including other regions such as UK/EMEA.
• Run post-event retrospectives and apply lessons learned to improve the next event, raising the bar for the regional program as it scales.

What You Bring

• 4-7 years' experience in B2B strategic events, ideally within technology, SaaS, cybersecurity or enterprise software, with a track record of owning a multi-market portfolio independently. Note: this is not a field marketing role.
• A demonstrated track record of owning event strategy and budget for multiple regions - not just executing a plan set by someone else.
• Strong program management chops: able to operate with ambiguity, prioritise ruthlessly, and drive cross-functional work to an outcome without close oversight.
• Experience managing across multiple time zones.
• Significant budget, vendor and contract management experience across multiple concurrent markets.
• Experience partnering with regional Sales leadership to align events to pipeline and account goals.
• Comfortable presenting regional event results, ROI and forecasts to senior stakeholders.
• Willingness to travel roughly 40-50%, mainly across APAC with some EMEA and AMER travel, including evening/weekend work around live events.

Cybersecurity or enterprise software experience is a plus, not a requirement. What matters is commercial judgement, regional ownership, and exceptional execution.

Preferred

• Experience with event and marketing technology such as Asana, Allocadia, Coupa, Jifflenow, Cvent, Salesforce, Sigma, Splash, RainFocus, Claude, and Google Suite.
• An additional regional language (e.g. Mandarin, Japanese, Bahasa).
• Familiarity with account-based marketing (ABM) principles and target-account event strategies.
• Experience mentoring or informally guiding more junior events team members.

The Ideal Candidate

You know a great regional events program isn't a string of individual events - it's a strategy. One that brings a brand to life market by market, earns trust with prospects and customers, arms regional Sales teams, and produces measurable business impact across a diverse set of markets.

You're equally comfortable building a regional budget model in a spreadsheet and solving an on-site problem at 11pm local time, several time zones from home. You're calm under ambiguity, direct when something isn't working, and generous with the teams you work alongside.

Most of all, you care about the craft - and about building something regional teams can rely on, not just the next event on the calendar.

What Success Looks Like

• The APAC events portfolio is delivered consistently and ties clearly back to pipeline.
• Regional leadership trusts you with their target accounts and plans around your calendar.
• The regional budget is managed with discipline and a defensible ROI story

A note on AI in our process: 

Abnormal AI uses AI-assisted tools to help our recruiting team prepare for candidate interviews. These tools analyze resume content and role requirements to suggest interview questions and areas for the interviewer to explore.They do not make hiring decisions or screen candidates automatically. Every decision about a candidacy is made by a person. Further, if your application is successful and Abnormal AI makes a conditional offer of employment, we will carry out pre-employment checks which must be successfully completed to progress to a final offer. All processes and pre-employment checks are in line with prevailing legislation and Abnormal AI's policies relevant to our security and privacy standards.

Abnormal AI is an equal opportunity employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, protected veteran status or other characteristics protected by law. For our EEO policy statement please click here. If you would like more information on your EEO rights under the law, please  click here.