At Klaviyo, we value the unique backgrounds, experiences and perspectives each Klaviyo (we call ourselves Klaviyos) brings to our workplace each and every day. We believe everyone deserves a fair shot at success and appreciate the experiences each person brings beyond the traditional job requirements. If you’re a close but not exact match with the description, we hope you’ll still consider applying. Want to learn more about life at Klaviyo? Visit careers.klaviyo.com to see how we empower creators to own their own destiny.
Summary
As the Director of Application Engineering, you are the chief architect of Klaviyo’s internal technology nervous system. This is a critical, hands-on leadership role focused on evolving our application ecosystem from point-to-point connections to a robust, event-driven integration fabric. Reporting to the CIO, you will lead a world-class team of engineers to deliver sophisticated integrations and build powerful custom tools that drive enterprise-wide automation and efficiency. Your mission is to create a secure, observable, and highly scalable technical foundation that empowers every team at Klaviyo to operate with speed and precision.
What You'll Do
- Lead an Elite Engineering Team: Recruit, mentor, and lead a team of full-stack, application and integration engineers. Foster a culture of engineering excellence, innovation, and full ownership of outcomes.
- Architect the Enterprise Integration Fabric: Design and own the enterprise integration strategy, moving towards an API-first, event-driven architecture. Own the enterprise iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service) and ensure its reliability and scale.
- Deliver Mission-Critical Integrations: Oversee the full development lifecycle for all integrations touching our core SaaS platforms (Workday, Salesforce, etc.), ensuring they are performant, resilient, and maintainable.
- Drive Custom Solution Development: Spearhead the engineering of bespoke internal applications that solve complex business problems where off-the-shelf software falls short, creating unique operational advantages for Klaviyo.
- Champion Modern Engineering Practices: Establish and enforce rigorous software engineering standards, including modern CI/CD, comprehensive automated testing, proactive security scanning (SAST/DAST), and SLO/SLA-based monitoring.
- Own the Technical Health of the Ecosystem: Assume ultimate ownership for the performance, security, and cost-effectiveness of our integration platforms, custom applications, and API management layer.
- Transform workflows by putting AI at the center, building smarter systems and ways of working from the ground up.
Who You Are
Required Qualifications:
- 10+ years of experience in software engineering, with a deep understanding of distributed systems, cloud architecture, and API design.
- 4+ years of direct people management experience, with a track record of leading and scaling teams of senior engineers.
- Expert-level experience designing and building complex, high-volume integrations and owning an enterprise-grade iPaaS platform (e.g., MuleSoft, Workato, Zapier etc).
- Strong proficiency with both SaaS integration patterns and custom microservice development in a major programming language (e.g., Python, Java, Go).
- Experience building and managing systems within a regulated environment that requires strong security and compliance controls (e.g., SOX, GDPR).
- You’ve already experimented with AI in work or personal projects, and you’re excited to dive in and learn fast. You’re hungry to responsibly explore new AI tools and workflows, finding ways to make your work smarter and more efficient.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Hands-on experience with event-driven architectures (e.g., Kafka, Kinesis, Google Pub/Sub) and data primitives architecture.
- Experience with API gateway management (e.g., Kong, Apigee) and establishing an API-first culture.
- Extensive experience developing and deploying applications on public cloud platforms (AWS, GCP), leveraging serverless and containerized architectures.
Massachusetts Applicants:
It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.
Our salary range reflects the cost of labor across various U.S. geographic markets. The range displayed below reflects the minimum and maximum target salaries for the position across all our US locations. The base salary offered for this position is determined by several factors, including the applicant’s job-related skills, relevant experience, education or training, and work location.
In addition to base salary, our total compensation package may include participation in the company’s annual cash bonus plan, variable compensation (OTE) for sales and customer success roles, equity, sign-on payments, and a comprehensive range of health, welfare, and wellbeing benefits based on eligibility.
Your recruiter can provide more details about the specific salary/OTE range for your preferred location during the hiring process.
Get to Know Klaviyo
We’re Klaviyo (pronounced clay-vee-oh). We empower creators to own their destiny by making first-party data accessible and actionable like never before. We see limitless potential for the technology we’re developing to nurture personalized experiences in ecommerce and beyond. To reach our goals, we need our own crew of remarkable creators—ambitious and collaborative teammates who stay focused on our north star: delighting our customers. If you’re ready to do the best work of your career, where you’ll be welcomed as your whole self from day one and supported with generous benefits, we hope you’ll join us.
AI fluency at Klaviyo includes responsible use of AI (including privacy, security, bias awareness, and human-in-the-loop). We provide accommodations as needed.
By participating in Klaviyo’s interview process, you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and will adhere to our Guidelines for using AI in the Klaviyo interview Process. For more information about how we process your personal data, see our Job Applicant Privacy Notice.
Klaviyo is committed to a policy of equal opportunity and non-discrimination. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, citizenship, national origin, color, religion or religious creed, age, sex (including pregnancy), gender identity, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, veteran or active military status, marital status, criminal record, genetics, retaliation, sexual harassment or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.
Top Skills
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