Lead Product Marketing Manager - Novus

The Team + The Role Software is being written faster than ever, and AI coding agents are accelerating how teams build and ship. Novus is Pendo's answer to what happens after software ships: helping fast-moving teams understand what is actually happening in their products and where to focus next. This is a new product, in a new category, for an audience Pendo has not traditionally sold to before: product engineers and application owners building AI-native software.

As Lead Product Marketing Manager for Novus, you are the marketing lead and GTM owner for the product. You own the narrative, positioning, demand strategy, community presence, launch moments, and early commercial outcomes end to end. This is a 0-to-1 role for someone who can write the playbook, execute it hands-on, and drive clarity across product, sales, marketing, and leadership.

This is a remote role in the US. We have offices in San Francisco, CA, Raleigh, NC, or New York, NY.

What this looks like day-to-day

• Narrative and positioning: Own the messaging, positioning, and talk tracks for Novus, including the breakthrough narrative, category story, and positioning documentation. Keep product, sales, marketing, and leadership aligned as the product and market evolve.
• End-to-end GTM ownership: Build and run the full go-to-market plan across audience targeting, channel strategy, campaign strategy, sales readiness, launch moments, and success metrics. Own the outcomes rather than handing strategy off to another team.
• Top-of-funnel and conversion: Partner with revenue marketing to define the acquisition channel mix, run campaigns, and drive early-access signups. Connect demand activity to free-to-paid conversion and early commercial signals.
• Community building: Build Novus' presence where builders already spend time, including developer forums, social channels, influencer relationships, and event-driven activation. Earn trust with audiences that are skeptical of traditional marketing.
• PLG motion: Partner with product and growth to design self-serve onboarding, activation flows, and freemium-to-paid conversion paths. Use data and feedback to improve how users discover, try, activate, and expand with Novus.
• Novus and Pendo positioning: Define how Novus and Pendo exist together in the market. Shape the path for customers moving from fast-moving AI-native teams into more complex product organizations.
• Sales and partner enablement: Build the materials, messaging, and proof points that help sales and partner teams have credible conversations with product engineers. Translate the product for a buyer that is meaningfully different from Pendo's traditional PM audience.
• Metrics and commercial impact: Work with revenue marketing to define and track the metrics that connect Novus activity to pipeline and early revenue outcomes. Focus on activation, free-to-paid conversion, marketing-sourced ARR, and other signals that show whether the motion is working. Who You Are Beyond the qualifications, we hire through a specific lens. These aren't buzzwords; they're the things we'll actually look for in how you talk about your work.

You're a builder, not a maintainer.

You're most energized when there isn't a clear path yet, and you get to define it. You don't wait for direction; you identify gaps, shape solutions, and drive them forward. At Pendo, great Product Marketing Directors don't just follow instructions; they operate as strategic advisors, influencing decisions, guiding stakeholders, and elevating how we work.

You're AI-curious - genuinely.

You're not using AI tools occasionally. You're rewiring how you work around them. You're faster, sharper, and more prolific because of it, and you bring that energy to everything — how you approach your work, how you prep, how you communicate, how you think. We want someone who sees AI as a multiplier, not a shortcut.

Must-haves

• 7+ years of marketing experience with real ownership of positioning and narrative for a product or category at the individual contributor level.
• Proven ability to drive a launch, repositioning, or category story end to end, including the writing and strategic thinking behind the work.
• Strong content instincts, with the ability to create crisp narratives, sharp positioning documents, and launch materials that audiences actually engage with.
• Active, practical fluency with AI tools such as Claude, ChatGPT, or similar, with evidence that AI has meaningfully changed how you work and what you ship.
• High bias to action, with a track record of shipping, gathering feedback, iterating, and filling gaps without waiting for perfect information.
• Ability to translate technical depth into clear, compelling messaging without oversimplifying a novel product.
• Strong cross-functional influence with product, sales, marketing, and leadership stakeholders, especially in environments where you need to drive alignment without direct authority.
• Experience with PLG motions, including self-serve acquisition, freemium conversion, activation, or community-led distribution.
• Credibility with developer or builder audiences, including an understanding of how technical users discover, evaluate, and build trust in new tools. Nice-to-haves
• Hands-on experience building community among developers or other technical builder audiences.
• Technical fluency from building software or working closely enough with engineers to understand codebases, pull requests, and deploy cycles.
• Experience in product analytics, instrumentation, observability, developer tools, open source, or AI coding tools.
• Growth-hacking experience in an early-stage or 0-to-1 product environment. About Pendo Pendo was founded in 2013 by former product managers, who combined their heads and hearts to build something they wanted but never had as product managers: a simple way to understand and attack what truly drives product success. Our mission is to improve society's experience with software. Come join one of the fastest-growing startups, supported by best-in-class institutions like Battery Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Spark Capital and Meritech.

Pendo Core Values: Bias to Act, Hone Your Craft, The Team is Pendo, and Maniacal Focus.

Location: Pendo is a hybrid culture. In-office 3 days per week unless designated remote.

Compensation: The expected salary range for this role to be performed in New York, NY or San Francisco, CA is $196,300 - $249,000.

Benefits: Pendo offers highly competitive, employer-heavy coverage in the United States, including $0 premium options, strong 401(k) match, equity, and flexible time off.

EEOC: We are an equal opportunity employer and believe having diverse teams where everyone brings their whole self to Pendo is key to our success. We welcome all people of different backgrounds, experiences, abilities and perspectives.

Accessibility: Pendo is committed to working with, and providing access and reasonable accommodation to, applicants with mental and/or physical disabilities. If you think you may require an accommodation for any part of the recruitment process, please send a request to: [email protected]. All requests for accommodations are treated discreetly and confidentially, as practical and permitted by law.