Pendo invests a lot in learning and development, we believe that providing career growth opportunities helps drive employee engagement, retention, and performance. We also want to equip our Pendozers for long-term careers. We are building the foundation for Pendo to be a great company that develops people from early career onward. It’s this mindset that inspires our annual summer internship program.
For the first time since 2019, we welcomed an in-person cohort of 36 interns this summer to our Raleigh headquarters. These students joined us from nine universities around the United States, and worked in roles across nearly all areas of business, with the majority in engineering and product. Every student took on meaningful projects for the business, while learning about their roles, our industry and business, and each other.
“To be given the opportunity to create and be taught is something I will always be grateful for. Pendo has provided me a pathway into my professional career through their belief in my ability to hone skills that I previously could only prove on paper.” –Jade Henderson, product security intern
The program began June 6 with a two-day orientation, including an overview of our company and products, introduction to the office, their teams and projects, and a calendar of events. And, of course, a welcome box full of company swag. Each intern was assigned a manager and mentor to guide them through the summer, answer any questions, and provide feedback on work completed. From there, our interns became immersed in their teams, working alongside full-time employees on important projects that will directly contribute to the success of the business.
Throughout the summer, our interns were fully engrained in the Pendo culture. They’re encouraged to participate in Pendo moments outside of their assigned duties—from Mexican fiesta social events to hackathon projects. The internship program ends with a presentation before the entire company, where each intern presents the project they worked on, and shares learnings that they will apply to their studies and future careers.
“I have had the opportunity to create and produce work for so many people within the company—as well as customers—and I am excited to see my contributions live on after I leave,” says Matt Newberry, a visual design intern. “I even learned some new Adobe skills and a new coding language, while working on some fun projects! I have been consistently supported and encouraged every step of the way, and I feel incredibly lucky to call myself a Pendozer.”
“I have had the opportunity to create and produce work for so many people within the company—as well as customers—and I am excited to see my contributions live on after I leave.” –Matt Newberry, visual design intern
We are so proud of the work our interns completed in two short months! Below are project highlights from our Summer 2022 intern class:
Jeriel Acosta – MBA product management intern from Northwestern University
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- Engaged in the full product development cycle, from identifying a problem worth solving to delivering a new analytics feature.
- Collaborated closely with Design, Engineering, and Research teams to validate the future value of the solution to our users.
Maria Lauria – MBA product management intern from Duke University
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- Improved and relaunched the Pendo Privacy Center as a new feature that helps our customers’ end users to understand how Pendo uses data to provide a better digital workplace experience.
Jade Henderson – product security intern from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Tasked with transforming current security training videos for the OWASP Top 10 Vulnerabilities and gamifying them into a capture the flag (CTF) training website.
- Took the lead of implementation, customization, and getting the Pendo snippet installed and running on the site with guide displays/surveys.
- Developed a “lunch-and-learn”, where she taught folks on the engineering/dev teams how to use an application security testing tool called Burp Suite.
Matt Newberry – visual design intern from Elon University
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- Created an image library and two animations for in-app guides in our customer-facing Pendo Academy, and designed a “Pendo Certified” t-shirt for those who pass the Pendo Essentials exam.
- Overhauled our customer experience team’s learning center in Skilljar and resource site, which entailed re-designing over 100 images.
We look forward to seeing what these students accomplish in their careers, and we hope to see at least some of them back here at Pendo in the future.
In the meantime, we look forward to welcoming our Intern Class of Summer 2023! Applications open this fall. Keep an eye out for postings on our careers page.
