Product Marketing Director, Novus

Pendo•San Francisco, CA

About The Position

As the Product Marketing Director for Novus, you'll be the marketing lead and GTM owner for a new product in a new category, targeting a new audience for Pendo: product engineers and application owners who build and ship AI-native software. You'll own everything from narrative and positioning to demand generation, community activation, and launch execution. This is a rare opportunity to define the category, build the market, and drive the full GTM motion for a product that's redefining how teams understand their software. It requires someone who is energized by ambiguity, fluent in developer and builder culture, and capable of translating a genuinely novel product into a compelling story and a high-performing marketing engine.

Requirements

7+ years of marketing experience, with at least 2-3 years owning GTM for a technical product or developer-facing platform at the IC level
You've built software, or worked closely enough alongside engineers that you understand the codebase, the PR, and the deploy cycle
You're AI-native in how you work: Claude, ChatGPT, or similar tools are your first stop, not an afterthought. You use AI to move faster, generate and pressure-test ideas
Strong content and storytelling instincts — you can write a crisp narrative, build a compelling launch moment, and translate technical depth into plain language without oversimplifying
Hands-on experience building community and developer awareness — you understand how builders discover tools, what earns trust in communities like Hacker News or GitHub, and what feels authentic versus tone-deaf

Nice To Haves

Hands-on experience with PLG go-to-market motions: self-serve acquisition, freemium conversion, and community-led distribution
Familiarity with product analytics, instrumentation, or observability tools
Experience marketing to or within developer communities: open source, dev tools, AI coding tools, or similar

Responsibilities

Develop and maintain messaging, positioning, and talk tracks that keep product, sales, marketing, and leadership aligned as Novus evolves
Own the end-to-end GTM plan: audience targeting, channel strategy, campaign execution, launch moments, and success metrics
Own top-of-funnel acquisition for Novus — defining the channel mix, running campaigns, and driving early access signups and free-to-paid conversion
Build the community presence from the ground up: developer forums, social channels, influencer relationships, and event-driven activation
Own the PLG motion — designing self-serve onboarding, activation flows, and freemium-to-paid conversion strategy in close collaboration with product and growth
Help define how Novus and Pendo work together — positioning the relationship clearly for customers scaling from fast-moving startups into more complex product organizations
Build sales and partner enablement materials that help the team have credible conversations with product engineers, a meaningfully different buyer than Pendo's traditional PM audience
Define and own the metrics that connect Novus marketing activity to pipeline and early commercial outcomes — free-to-paid conversion, activation rates, and marketing-sourced ARR contribution.

Benefits

best-in-class institutions like Battery Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Spark Capital and Meritech
gain experience in a diverse and exciting set of technologies and clients
have a real impact on Pendo's future
culture is passionate, dynamic, and fun
equal opportunity employer
diverse teams where everyone brings their whole self to Pendo is key to our success
welcome all people of different backgrounds, experiences, abilities and perspectives
commitment to working with, and providing access and reasonable accommodation to, applicants with mental and/or physical disabilities
salary ranges are based on paying competitively for our size and industry
one part of many compensation, benefits and other reward opportunities we provide