I'm a product content leader in Raleigh, NC. Currently a Staff Content Designer at Pendo, I lead UX writing and documentation across our platform and build the AI systems that scale our content standards.
I used Pendo every day as a customer before I ever worked here. That's still the unfair advantage: I know what it's like to sit on the other side of this product trying to get something done.
I trained as a technical writer (B.A. in Professional & Technical Writing, double major in Literature & Language) at Virginia Tech. At Extensiv, I launched the company's first knowledge base—information-based support cases dropped 35%, and the CEO was still messaging me usage charts two years later (up 50% year over year).
Two years after launch, the CEO was still sending me usage charts unprompted.
But the pattern that would define my career started there, too: I kept drifting toward the product. Colleagues called me "a key validator in UI copy." When leadership discussed where I should report, the CEO's summary was that teams were "fighting" over me—and that my desire was to be closer to the in-product user experience. He wasn't guessing; I'd said exactly that, in writing, in 2021: my passion is in UX, not in writing help articles. The design lead's response stuck with me: that I didn't just have a sense for good UX—I understood why a UX was good or bad.
The 2021 receipts: me asking to move toward UX, and the design lead's answer.
I joined Pendo in 2023 as a Senior Technical Writer and immediately started pushing upstream. I championed UX writing when it wasn't part of anyone's job description, took on in-app copy alongside docs, started raising my own pull requests for UI strings, and built the content AI system that now serves the whole company.
That championing worked. In 2024, the writing team moved into the design org with UX writing formally part of our remit—the thing I’d been doing by force of will became the thing we were accountable for. In February 2025, I was promoted to Staff Content Designer.
In October 2026, I handed release docs to PMs through a pipeline I built—then moved to Novus, Pendo’s next-generation AI product, to own the quality of its AI-generated language.
The throughline: I keep moving closer to where the product actually gets made.
Help docs should be optional. A product should be clear enough not to need them, and I spent enough time as a technical writer to know when documentation is covering for a confusing screen. So most of my work happens upstream: in the codebase, in the design system, and in the AI tools my teams draft with. When a support-content team asked for 20 more help guides, I flagged which ones were actually product problems—and when I was asked to advise on how docs surfaced in our support chatbot, I rewrote 50+ of its responses instead. The chatbot's voice is product UX, not someone else's strings. I eventually automated myself out of writing them.
Not that I'm against docs… demonstrably the opposite. The receipts span two companies and seven years:
Then (Extensiv): A customer CIO emailed my boss unsolicited: "Most people only reach out when they have issues... she is one of the best. You're extremely lucky to have her."
A customer CIO emailing my boss, unsolicited, 2019. (Bloomer is my maiden name—this receipt predates the wedding.)
Our largest client's stakeholders brought up the help center multiple times at a leadership dinner—"I don't know who that Maddy Snyder person is, but she is on her game."
Relayed to leadership the morning after dinner with our largest client.
A sales leader after a demo: "based on their comments, your work may have just closed the deal."
And my favorite, from a colleague mid-customer-call: "I pull up your fancy help articles and get through the discussion much easier... It got me an upgrade this morning."
My favorite kind of docs metric: a colleague's upsell, attributed to an article.
Now (Pendo): "I want to compliment whoever does your technical writing — all of your documentation... chef's kiss, it is so easy to understand." (Product Manager, Mentor Collective, on a recorded call.)
A Principal Engineer at DocuSign opened a technical evaluation with "We found your documentation very informative"—as our AE put it, enterprise deals are a game of inches, and documentation matters.
"idk who last updated the article about funnels but it is SO great." (Design Systems Manager, Nelnet.)
Not every word in our help center is mine—but the standards are. And events overview → shares one example of how I built one from nothing.
Consistency is a systems problem. No amount of individual craft fixes language at platform scale. Standards have to live where the work happens—in the component library, in the PR checks, in the drafting tools—not in a wiki nobody opens.
AI is just another tool. Content specialists have always had to learn new tools fast and translate complex things into plain terms. AI is only the newest thing in the kit. It doesn't replace judgment—it speeds things up and unlocks brainstorming on the spot. The discipline is intentionality: knowing when to reach for it and when to use your own brain, so your craft and thinking don't atrophy. And it's why I build the systems that keep AI-generated content from becoming slop as products shift from static copy to dynamic, generated experiences—and the evals that prove whether it worked.
Also of very important note: I will not be surrendering the em dash—it was ours first, and I refuse to let the robots have it.
"Maddy is a systems thinker, and always writes copy with the entire platform in mind… Maddy makes our product better by taking into account the entire system." — Senior Product Designer
"Maddy is a recognized content leader across the org, a reputation she's earned with her commitment to excellence and proactive collaboration." — Manager, Technical Writing
"The context packs she built — and the custom GPT based on them — are some of the most practical and forward-thinking tools I've seen." — Sr. Staff Product Designer