Sr. Director, Customer Engineering, Strategic Pursuits

The Team + The Role

Pendo’s go-to-market organization is responsible for winning, landing, and expanding the enterprise accounts that will shape the company’s next stage of growth. The team brings together revenue leadership, account executives, customer revenue, product, engineering, support, and technical experts to tell Pendo’s story clearly and deliver measurable customer outcomes. This role sits at the center of Pendo’s strategic revenue motions and connects the technical work required before and after the sale.

As Senior Director, Customer Engineering, Strategic Pursuits, you will lead the technical arm of Pendo’s most strategic enterprise engagements. You will own demo engineering, solutions architecture, and post-sale technical strategy for high-value pursuits and named accounts. Reporting directly to the CRO, you will operate as a key member of the go-to-market leadership team and ensure Pendo’s technical story is compelling, successfully implemented, and continuously expanded.

This is a remote role based in the United States.

What this looks like day-to-day

• Demo engineering: Build and maintain a world-class demo engineering function that creates repeatable, high-fidelity product experiences for enterprise buyers. Partner with product marketing and account executives to ensure demo environments reflect Pendo’s current capabilities and forward roadmap.
• Strategic pursuit assets: Develop custom demo assets and proof-of-concept infrastructure for strategic and named account pursuits. Establish demo standards, playbooks, and tooling that can scale across the field organization.
• Solutions architecture leadership: Lead Customer Engineers engaged in strategic enterprise deals, providing technical discovery, architecture guidance, and proof-of-concept execution. Own technical win strategy for Novus Enterprise and key expansion opportunities by translating business requirements into Pendo implementation blueprints.
• Executive technical sponsorship: Serve as the executive technical sponsor in high-stakes competitive evaluations. Bring strong executive presence and technical fluency to conversations with senior customer stakeholders and internal leadership.
• Team capacity and development: Build Customer Engineering capacity, hiring plans, and skill development frameworks in alignment with Pendo’s two-motion go-to-market model. Create the structure, playbooks, and standards needed for the function to scale effectively.
• Strategic customer success: Own post-sale technical strategy for a defined portfolio of strategic accounts, ensuring successful onboarding, adoption, and measurable ROI realization. Partner with the Customer Revenue motion to identify expansion opportunities, protect NRR, and build deep executive relationships.
• Account health and value realization: Define success metrics and health frameworks for strategic accounts. Lead QBRs and executive business reviews that connect technical execution to customer outcomes, expansion potential, and long-term account health.
• Cross-functional advocacy: Work closely with Product, Engineering, and Support to advocate for strategic customer needs. Use customer insights from enterprise pursuits and post-sale engagements to help Pendo sharpen its technical story and execution.

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 Directors, Customer Engineering 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

• 10–12+ years of experience in solutions engineering, presales, or technical sales, including at least 5–7 years in a leadership capacity.
• Proven experience managing multi-functional technical teams such as solutions architects, demo engineers, customer success engineers, or equivalent teams in a B2B SaaS environment.
• Deep fluency in enterprise software buying cycles, including technical discovery, proof-of-concept execution, technical committee navigation, and complex deal support.
• Experience owning customer success or post-sale technical outcomes, not only pre-sale technical execution.
• Strong commercial instincts with a clear understanding of ARR, NRR, churn, and expansion, and the ability to connect team execution to those business metrics.
• Exceptional executive presence and communication skills, with the ability to engage effectively with senior technical buyers, emerging AI leaders, and internal teams.
• A builder’s mindset, with demonstrated experience creating playbooks, building teams from scratch, and leaving organizations more structured than you found them.

Nice-to-haves

• Familiarity with product analytics, observability, digital adoption, or developer tooling categories.
• Experience supporting strategic enterprise pursuits tied to both existing customer expansion and net-new buyer motions.
• Experience operating in a high-visibility go-to-market leadership role with direct exposure to senior executives.

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 On-Target Earnings (OTE) range for this role to be performed in the United States is USD $300,000 - USD $373,000, with a 70/30 base-to-variable compensation split.

Benefits: Pendo offers highly competitive, employer-heavy coverage in the United States, 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.