The Team + The Role
The Pendo for Agents team builds Pendo's AI and agent product area, a large greenfield surface where much of the architecture is being defined as the team builds. This team operates at the center of a fast-moving product space where engineering decisions shape both the customer experience and the technical foundation for future scale.
As Senior Manager, Engineering, you will own technical direction for Pendo for Agents end to end and be fully accountable for delivery, engineering quality, and the talent pipeline. You will partner closely with Product, Design, Staff and Principal engineers, and adjacent Engineering leaders to make high-quality architecture decisions, guide execution, and grow a team that can move quickly without over-building.
This role is based in our New York City office.
What this looks like day-to-day
- Team leadership: Lead, coach, and manage a team of approximately four engineers today, with the role growing into ownership of two teams as the product area scales. You will support onboarding, professional development, and the growth of strong individual contributors and emerging technical leaders.
- Architecture ownership: Own the technical direction for the Pendo for Agents architecture end to end. You will partner with Staff and Principal engineers on build-versus-buy decisions, including when to use existing frameworks and when to build in-house.
- Delivery execution: Guide prioritization, planning, and execution across the team while maintaining a healthy delivery cadence. You will own delivery commitments across sprint and quarterly planning cycles and hold the team accountable to outcomes.
- Cross-functional partnership: Partner with Product and Design to deliver high-quality features using Agile development practices. You will align on scope, sequencing, and risk while surfacing engineering constraints early and maintaining trust under pressure.
- Player-coach technical leadership: Stay hands-on in architecture and technical problem-solving while spending the majority of your time coaching, unblocking, and growing the team. This role requires a manager who can both lead through others and engage directly in hard technical decisions.
- AI-enabled operations: Use AI tools to accelerate engineering operations, including retro synthesis, incident pattern analysis, documentation, and onboarding. You will set the expectation that AI tooling is part of the team's standard workflow.
- Hiring and talent planning: Own headcount planning within the team and partner with recruiting on sourcing, interview calibration, offer decisions, and closing candidates. You will help build the talent pipeline needed to support the product area's growth.
- Team culture: Create a healthy team culture that promotes ownership, psychological safety, and continuous improvement. You will help the team move quickly while maintaining quality, clarity, and strong engineering judgment.
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 Senior Engineering Managers 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
- 5+ years of engineering experience, including at least 2 years in a direct people-management role, with a track record of growing engineers as well as delivering software.
- Hands-on architecture experience with LLM or agent systems, including RAG, tool-calling, or orchestration frameworks, with the ability to own architecture rather than only review it.
- Experience delivering in greenfield or early-stage product areas where architecture and patterns are still being defined.
- Demonstrated ability to manage delivery commitments across a team of engineers, including ownership of sprint or quarterly planning processes.
- Strong build-versus-buy judgment in a fast-moving AI tooling landscape.
- Strong technical foundation in front-end or back-end development, such as React, Angular, Vue, Go, Python, Java, Ruby, or C#.
- Demonstrated success working cross-functionally across Engineering, Product, and Design, with the ability to surface constraints early and maintain trust under pressure.
- Experience hiring for technical roles, including calibrating interview panels, making offer decisions, and closing candidates.
Nice-to-haves
- Experience building or maintaining cloud-native applications.
- Experience shipping a 0-to-1 AI or agent product, or leading a team that did, including customer-support agents, copilots, or autonomous or agentic systems.
- Hands-on experience with modern AI, LLM, and agent tooling, with the ability to evaluate new tools critically and bring that fluency to the team.
- Experience leading engineers who use AI-powered developer tools such as Copilot or Cursor to improve productivity, code quality, or onboarding speed.
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 City is $240,000 - $260,000.
Benefits: 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: accommodation@pendo.io. All requests for accommodations are treated discreetly and confidentially, as practical and permitted by law.