Lead Product Marketing Manager - Novus

Pendo•Raleigh, NC

10d•$196,300 - $249,000•Remote

About The Position

This role is for a Lead Product Marketing Manager for Novus, a new product from Pendo designed to help teams understand what is happening in their products after they ship, especially for AI-native software. The product targets product engineers and application owners. The Lead Product Marketing Manager will be the marketing lead and go-to-market (GTM) owner, responsible for the narrative, positioning, demand strategy, community presence, launch execution, and early commercial outcomes. This is a 0-to-1 role requiring someone to create and execute the playbook, driving clarity across product, sales, marketing, and leadership. The role is remote within the US, with offices in San Francisco, CA, Raleigh, NC, or New York, NY.

Requirements

7+ years of marketing experience with demonstrated 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 strategic thinking and content creation.
Strong content instincts, with the ability to create crisp narratives, sharp positioning documents, and engaging launch materials.
Active, practical fluency with AI tools such as Claude, ChatGPT, or similar, with evidence of AI meaningfully changing work processes and output.
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 requiring 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.

Responsibilities

Own the messaging, positioning, and talk tracks for Novus, including the breakthrough narrative, category story, and positioning documentation, ensuring alignment across product, sales, marketing, and leadership.
Build and execute the full go-to-market plan, encompassing audience targeting, channel strategy, campaign strategy, sales readiness, launch moments, and success metrics, owning the outcomes.
Partner with revenue marketing to define the acquisition channel mix, run campaigns, and drive early-access signups, connecting demand activity to free-to-paid conversion and early commercial signals.
Build Novus' presence in developer forums, social channels, influencer relationships, and event-driven activation to earn trust with technical audiences.
Partner with product and growth teams to design self-serve onboarding, activation flows, and freemium-to-paid conversion paths, using data and feedback for continuous improvement.
Define the market positioning of Novus in relation to Pendo and shape the customer journey from fast-moving AI-native teams to more complex product organizations.
Develop materials, messaging, and proof points to enable sales and partner teams to effectively engage with product engineers, translating the product for a distinct buyer audience.
Define and track metrics connecting Novus activity to pipeline and early revenue, focusing on activation, free-to-paid conversion, marketing-sourced ARR, and other key performance indicators.