Director, Customer Growth & Lifecycle
The Team + The Role
Pendo is rebuilding for the AI era, with new products, new buyers, and new ways to deliver value to customers. The Customer Growth and Lifecycle function sits at the center of that shift, helping turn customer engagement into a deliberate, repeatable, compounding growth motion. This team connects product usage, customer behavior, experimentation, and lifecycle programs to help customers get more value from Pendo.
As Director, Customer Growth & Lifecycle, you will own the lifecycle motion from first login to fully embedded power user. You will design the experiments, programs, and data-driven interventions that make engagement intentional rather than accidental, using Pendo’s own platform and analytics to understand what moves adoption, retention, and expansion. You will also lead a team of approximately five Adoption Managers and Pendo’s Center of Excellence / Product Operations function.
This is a role based in-office in Raleigh or New York, or Remote in the East Coast.
What this looks like day-to-day
- Customer lifecycle ownership: Build, iterate, and optimize the full digital customer journey from onboarding through expansion. You will start with functional lifecycle infrastructure and make it more measurable, scalable, and compounding.
- Behavior-to-action strategy: Use Pendo’s own analytics to identify where users find value, where they drop off, and which interventions move the needle. You will scope and prove your own work rather than waiting on an analyst to define the opportunity.
- Scaled Pendo-on-Pendo execution: Act as one of Pendo’s most important internal practitioners of the product. Design and ship cross-channel experiments across in-app guides, email, NPS, segmentation, and other lifecycle channels that show customers what great product engagement looks like.
- Roadmap influence: Bring front-line visibility into customer behavior directly into product conversations. Your insights will help shape feature decisions and improve how Pendo builds for adoption, retention, and expansion.
- Team leadership: Develop and lead a team of approximately five Adoption Managers while also guiding Pendo’s Center of Excellence / Product Operations function. You will set direction, coach the team, and raise the operating ceiling while staying close to the work.
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 Directors of Customer Growth & Lifecycle 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 experience in product growth, lifecycle design, or growth marketing in software.
- Experience running lifecycle or growth programs in a product-led SaaS company where the end user and economic buyer are different people.
- A proven track record of moving product adoption and retention metrics, including clear examples of programs you shipped and the measurable impact they created.
- Experience building and leading a team of growth or lifecycle professionals focused on the customer journey.
- Strong data fluency, including the ability to scope, query, analyze, and prove the impact of your own work without creating an analyst dependency.
- Hands-on experience with experimentation, including forming hypotheses, testing quickly, learning from results, and shipping improvements.
- Power-user experience with Pendo.
- Daily use of AI tools, with a clear point of view on where they accelerate growth, lifecycle, and customer engagement work.
Nice-to-haves
- Experience designing lifecycle programs that connect digital onboarding, product usage, retention, and expansion.
- Experience using customer conversations alongside behavioral data to understand motivation, friction, and value realization.
- Experience influencing product roadmap decisions through customer behavior insights and lifecycle learnings.
- Experience leading a Center of Excellence or Product Operations function.
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 base salary for this role is $190,000 - $220,000.
Benefits: United States benefits include highly competitive, employer-heavy coverage 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.