Lead Product Marketing Manager - Novus

Pendo is a software company developing Novus, a product that helps teams understand product usage and prioritize improvements after software ships. The Lead Product Marketing Manager will own Novus’s narrative, positioning, go-to-market strategy, demand generation, community presence, launches, and early commercial outcomes. This role will work cross-functionally with product, sales, marketing, and leadership in a 0-to-1 environment.

Responsibilities:

• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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

Requirements:

• 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
• 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