Product Design/UX Engineer Student Placement

Team Description

Pendo is defining the AI transformation for enterprise software. As software undergoes a fundamental shift, many enterprises are unsure how to adapt. Pendo helps them decide, measure, and maximize AI’s value — powered by over a decade of product usage data and deep expertise in how software is actually experienced by users.

Today, Pendo supports more than 14,000 customers and 900M+ users globally, with $200M+ ARR and strong enterprise growth. Trusted by brands like Amazon, Verizon, and United Airlines, Pendo combines analytics, qualitative feedback, and in-app guidance into a unified platform — helping organizations turn insight into action with measurable impact (including 396% ROI as reported by Forrester).

AI-first innovation is central to our strategy. With significant R&D investment focused on AI — including Agent Mode, Predict, Analytics, and strategic acquisitions — we are building the next generation of intelligent product experiences.

The Design & Research team at Pendo supports this entire platform ecosystem, working closely with Product and Engineering partners to shape experiences that connect qualitative insight, analytics, and in-app action. It’s critical that customers experience Pendo as a cohesive, unified platform — not a collection of disconnected tools.

This placement role will be embedded within a product team while maintaining close connection to the wider design and research practice. The student will contribute to real product work at meaningful scale, while learning how design and engineering decisions are made, tested, and evolved in a modern, AI-forward SaaS environment.

At Pendo, we guide enterprises through the biggest software shift of the decade — and this role offers the opportunity to contribute to that transformation from day one.

Role Description

This placement year role is designed for a student who enjoys learning through making, exploring product experiences critically, and rapidly prototyping ideas. Dependent on the candidates background and overall career focus, this role will focus on either: Product Design or UX Engineering.

The Product Design placement student would:

Use Pendo as a customer and an analyst

Tear down existing experiences to identify opportunities for UX improvements

Explore and prototype improvements using both traditional design tools and AI-assisted workflows

Validate ideas through feedback from design partners, user testing and Pendo-enabled feedback loops (e.g. analytics, session replays, surveys).

Contribute future-facing concepts that help the team imagine what’s next

The specifics of the work will evolve based on team priorities. This role consistently focuses on turning ambiguity into tangible ideas and accelerating product conversations through prototypes and structured exploration.

If a candidate demonstrates stronger frontend engineering capability and systems-level implementation strength, this placement may pivot to a UX Engineer variant.

In this version of the role, the focus shifts from exploratory concepting to implementation-led UX improvements that span multiple areas of the Pendo platform.

The UX Engineer placement student would:

Implement high-impact UX improvements across product surfaces

Contribute to Prism design system enhancements

Work on improving platform-wide interaction patterns and global components

Establish feedback loops (analytics, Replay, surveys) to validate improvements

Coordinate with Engineering, Product, and Design to drive cross-team adoption

The core objective remains the same: improve the cohesiveness and usability of Pendo’s platform. The mechanism shifts from primarily prototyping to implementation and systems-level UX improvement.

Role Responsibilities

This Placement Year (33 weeks, Sept. 10, 2026 - May 10, 2027) role is designed for a student who is pursuing a career in the UX Engineering/Product Design space and enjoys learning through making, exploring product experiences critically, and rapidly prototyping ideas.

General Role Responsibilities (Product Designer Path)

Actively use Pendo products to understand workflows, value moments, and friction

Conduct product teardowns and experience reviews, documenting findings and opportunities

Create low- and high-fidelity prototypes to explore and communicate design ideas

Use AI tools to accelerate prototyping, iteration, and exploration and to commit code (in partnership with an engineer to support)

Gather feedback from designers, product managers, and Pendo users

Support lightweight user testing of prototypes and synthesize learnings

Conduct competitive and comparative reviews to inform design thinking

Participate in critiques, reviews, and team discussions

UX Engineer Path Role Responsibilities

Implement scoped UX improvements in collaboration with engineering teams

Contribute to Prism design system components and documentation

Use analytics and customer feedback to identify improvement opportunities

Support behind-flag or experimental releases for Platform-wide updates

Share work early and often to gather cross-functional feedback

Balance quick wins with long-term architectural considerations

Product Designer Path - Minimum Qualifications

Current student in UX, Product Design, Interaction Design, or similar (Sheffield Hallam University)

Experience using Figma for layouts and interactive prototypes

Comfort exploring ideas visually and iteratively

Willingness to ask questions, seek feedback, and learn

UX Engineer Path - Minimum Qualifications

Current student in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or similar

Experience with modern frontend frameworks (Vue, React, etc.)

Familiarity with component-based architecture

Strong communication skills

Preferred Qualifications (Both Paths)

Exposure to usability testing or research

Familiarity with design systems

Experience using AI tools (e.g. Cursor, Claude Code, ChatGPT) for design or engineering workflows

Awareness of SaaS or B2B products

Pendo Description:

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. You will gain experience in a diverse and exciting set of technologies and clients and have a real impact on Pendo's future. Our culture is passionate, dynamic, and fun.

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.