---
title: 'Sr. Software Engineer (AI) at Pendo'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/sr-software-engineer-ai-pendo-new-york-b7xzfqhcrrq4'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-06'
---

# Sr. Software Engineer (AI) at Pendo

- **Company:** Pendo
- **Location:** New York, NY
- **Posted:** 2026-05-05
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-06
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/pendo/jobs/8533495002

## Job description

The Team + The Role

Our Emerging Team is focused on building AI Products for our product experience (PX) platform. We build from the ground up to explore, prototype, and ship AI-native experiences that change how software teams understand and serve their users. This is not an AI layer added to existing product; it is a deliberate bet on what product intelligence looks like next. The team operates with high autonomy, moves quickly, and builds products without clear precedents.

As a Sr. Software Engineer (AI), you will sit at the intersection of deep technical capability and strong product judgment. You will design and ship applied AI systems, including RAG pipelines, agentic workflows, and LLM-powered features, from prototype through production. You will make principled technical decisions, evaluate model behavior rigorously, and communicate tradeoffs clearly to engineers and non-engineers alike.

This role is based in our New York office.

What this looks like day-to-day

- Applied AI systems: Design and build AI systems including RAG pipelines, agentic workflows, and LLM-powered features. You will take work from prototype through production and ensure it can hold up in real customer environments.
- Technical decision-making: Make principled decisions on when to prompt, when to fine-tune, and when to use a different tool entirely. You will explain these tradeoffs clearly so the team can move quickly without sacrificing quality.
- Model evaluation: Instrument and evaluate model outputs rigorously by defining evaluation frameworks and catching hallucinations early. You will implement guardrails that can withstand real-world load and production use.
- Productionize AI ownership: Own model deployment, monitoring, latency optimization, cost management, and reliability at scale. You will help ensure AI systems are observable, efficient, and dependable in production.
- Full-stack product shipping: Contribute across the stack when needed because this team ships products, not just models. You will work across backend and frontend to get AI-powered experiences in front of users.
- Product partnership: Partner closely with product and design to frame problems well before writing code. You will push back when the framing is wrong and help the team focus on what should be built, not just what can be built.
- Research and tooling awareness: Stay current on the research and tooling landscape, including transformers, diffusion architectures, orchestration frameworks, and emerging agent patterns. You will bring relevant advances back to the team and apply them thoughtfully.

## 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 Sr. AI Software Engineers 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

- Deep hands-on experience building and shipping LLM-powered systems, including retrieval-augmented generation, tool use, and agent orchestration frameworks.
- Strong technical depth in system design, including choosing the right architecture, identifying failure modes early, and making tradeoffs that hold up across the product lifecycle.
- Experience owning technical quality beyond your own features, including setting standards, catching problems in review, and improving shared infrastructure and tooling.
- Strong command of model evaluation, including designing evaluation suites, reasoning about overfitting and bias-variance tradeoffs, and systematically detecting and mitigating hallucinations.
- Solid understanding of modern model architectures, including transformers and diffusion models, with the judgment to decide when and how to apply them.
- Production AI experience, including model deployment, monitoring pipelines, and latency, cost, and reliability optimization in a live environment.
- Strong full-stack fundamentals with the ability to work across backend and frontend systems to ship complete, user-facing AI products.
- Exceptional communication skills with the ability to explain complex technical decisions clearly to engineers, product managers, and executives.
- Demonstrated product thinking, including the ability to ask whether something should be built before deciding how to build it.

Nice-to-haves

- Experience fine-tuning foundation models and a clear point of view on when fine-tuning outperforms prompting approaches.
- Familiarity with AI safety considerations, guardrail frameworks, and responsible deployment practices.
- Experience building agentic or multi-step reasoning systems using tools such as LangChain, LlamaIndex, or custom orchestration frameworks.
- Background in a SaaS or product analytics environment where user behavior data informs AI design.
- Prior experience contributing to or launching a net-new team or product area.

## 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, NY is $250,000 - $275,000.

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.

## About Pendo

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Pendo provides a comprehensive product experience platform that uses AI-powered analytics, in-app guidance, and user feedback to help companies improve software adoption and user experience.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Unicorn, Secondary Market)
- **Headquarters**: Raleigh, North Carolina, United States
- **Founded**: October 2013
- **Founders**: Eric Boduch, Erik Troan, Rahul Jain, Todd Olson

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Product Experience & Analytics Software, SaaS
- **Target customers**: B2B; serves a wide range from SMB and mid-market to large enterprises (Fortune 500, B2B tech, education, healthcare). Over 14,000 companies use Pendo across 115 different industries.
- **Mission or purpose statement**: "To elevate the world's experiences with software." [pendo.io](https://www.pendo.io/about/)

## Products & Services
- **[Pendo Platform]**: The core all-in-one product experience platform combining powerful software usage analytics, in-app guidance (walkthroughs, tooltips), and user feedback capabilities. It enables both technical and non-technical teams to deliver better product experiences. [pendo.io](https://www.pendo.io/)
- **[Pendo Listen]**: An AI product launched in 2024 to help product teams take action on customer feedback and deliver returns on R&D investments. [crunchbase.com](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/pendo-io)
- **Mind the Product & Customer Communities**: Provides education, events, and training to support product and digital leaders globally.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed (Private Unicorn status).
- **Key Metric**: Surpassed **$200 Million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)** as of May 2024, with a record number of new products released during that fiscal year. [crunchbase.com](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/pendo-io)
- **Total Funding**: $469.5M raised. [crunchbase.com](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/pendo-io)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Thoma Bravo, Tiger Global Management. [crunchbase.com](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/pendo-io)
- **Growth Signals**: 
  - Processes over **20 billion daily events** and serves **1 billion+ monthly users**. [pendo.io](https://www.pendo.io/about/)
  - Has collected **35 trillion events** to power its AI. [pendo.io](https://www.pendo.io/)
  - Customers include major names like Verizon, Morgan Stanley, LabCorp, OpenTable, Okta, Salesforce, and Zendesk. [crunchbase.com](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/pendo-io)
  - 850+ employees across 10 global offices. [pendo.io](https://www.pendo.io/about/)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Massive Proprietary Data Set**: The largest product data set in the world (35 trillion events), which powers a uniquely smart, real-time AI for products and agents. [pendo.io](https://www.pendo.io/)
- **Comprehensive Platform**: Combines analytics, in-app guidance, and feedback in one platform, enabling non-technical teams (e.g., product managers, marketers) to act on data without engineering support.
- **Strong Community Moat**: Through "Mind the Product," Pendo has built a large, loyal community of product professionals, creating a powerful network effect and brand loyalty.

## Strategic Focus
- **AI-First Innovation**: Heavily investing in AI, with a Chief AI Officer and new AI products like "Pendo Listen" to close the gap between AI spend and AI adoption. [pendo.io](https://www.pendo.io/careers/)
- **Product-Led Growth**: Continuing to put "product at the center of everything," helping companies innovate at the speed of changing user needs.
- **Global Expansion**: Operating in 10 offices worldwide (Raleigh, San Francisco, New York, Herzliya, Tokyo, Sydney, London, Sheffield) with a clear focus on scaling international sales and engineering teams.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Described as a blend of "startup thrill with grown-up responsibility." Values include "Maniacal Focus on the Customer," "Bias to Act," and "The TEAM is Pendo." The culture is ambitious, caring, and direct. [pendo.io](https://www.pendo.io/careers/)
- **Remote/Hybrid/Office**: Offers flexible work hours and a flexible time off policy. Many roles are available in specific offices (Raleigh, NYC, San Francisco, London, etc.) with some remote options (especially for EST-based roles). [greenhouse.io](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/pendo)
- **Notable Perks**: 
  - Up to **16 weeks of paid parental leave** with a flexible return schedule. [pendo.io](https://www.pendo.io/careers/)
  - Generous health and wellness plans (medical, dental, vision, mental health).
  - In-house management development classes, guest speaker lunch & learns, and conference attendance.
  - Fun workplace culture including board game nights, team karaoke, ping pong, weekly catered lunch, and local brews on the rooftop deck. [pendo.io](https://www.pendo.io/careers/)
- **Diversity & Inclusion**: Committed to building teams that represent the communities they operate in, valuing diverse backgrounds and lived experiences. [pendo.io](https://www.pendo.io/careers/)

## Sources
1. [Pendo Careers Page](https://www.pendo.io/careers/)
2. [Pendo About Page](https://www.pendo.io/about/)
3. [Pendo Product Page](https://www.pendo.io/)
4. [Pendo Job Board (Greenhouse)](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/pendo)
5. [Pendo Crunchbase Profile](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/pendo-io)

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