Distinguished Engineer, Enterprise Scalability

Klaviyo; Boston (MA); On-site; USD 244,000 - 366,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus plan

Equity

Sign-on bonus

Benefits package

Job summary

Klaviyo is seeking a Senior IC for scale to drive performance, reliability, and multi-region readiness across a large multi-tenant SaaS platform. You will push platform-wide architectural changes, identify bottlenecks, and collaborate across teams to productionize improvements.

This IC role emphasizes hands-on impact, technical depth, and crisp cross-organization alignment, without direct reports, delivering measurable value for customers and the business.

Qualifications

• 12+ years scaling multi-tenant SaaS with measurable impact.
• Expertise in performance engineering and capacity planning.
• Experience with sharding/partitioning, caching, and multi-region deployments.

Responsibilities

• Define scalability fitness functions and align teams to SLOs/budgets.
• Design/implement sharding, partitioning, caching, and multi-region strategies.
• Build benchmarks and profiling tools, land fixes with teams.
• Lead scalability reviews and readiness gates to accelerate delivery.
• Communicate tradeoffs to executives and engineers with business impact.
• Integrate AI into scale work with guardrails and observability.

Skills

Performance engineering

Capacity planning

Sharding/partitioning

Caching/back-pressure

Multi-region readiness

High-volume migrations

AI tools & automation

Cross-org influence

Executive communication

Tools

Benchmarks

Profiling harnesses

Job description

At Klaviyo, we value the unique backgrounds, experiences and perspectives each 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 klaviyo.com/careers to see how we empower creators to own their own destiny.

Be Klaviyo’s senior IC for scale, you will report into a VP of Engineering and lead performance, reliability, multi‑region, and large‑tenant readiness. You’ll drive platform‑wide architectural change, hunt bottlenecks and optimize systems, and partner across teams to productionize improvements. Given that this is an IC role with no direct reports; you will lead via technical depth, hands‑on impact, and crisp cross‑org alignment.

What You’ll Do

• Define enterprise scalability fitness functions (latency/throughput/error rates) and a scorecard; align teams to SLOs and budgets.
• Design/implement sharding and partitioning strategies, caching/back‑pressure, multi‑region readiness, and high‑volume migration paths.
• Build lightweight enablement: benchmarks, profiling harnesses, reproducible testbeds; pair with teams to land fixes.
• Lead scalability reviews and readiness gates that accelerate—not block—delivery; drive incident deep dives tied to systemic fixes.
• Communicate clearly to execs and engineers, tying technical work to business impact and customer outcomes.
• Integrate AI into scale and resiliency work—from proactive anomaly detection to synthetic load and guided runbooks—so performance improvements stick and incidents don’t repeat.

Who You Are

• Experience: 12+ years scaling multi‑tenant SaaS with a reputation for removing major bottlenecks and proving impact with data.
• Technical expertise: Performance engineering, capacity planning, sharding/partitioning, caching/back‑pressure, multi‑region readiness, and high‑volume migrations; you turn hotspots into robust patterns.
• AI tools & automation: You apply AI to scale work—profiling assistance, workload modeling, synthetic traffic generation, anomaly detection, and runbook copilots—always with explicit guardrails and observability.
• Cross‑org influence: You align teams through fitness functions, scorecards, and readiness gates that accelerate—not block—delivery; you communicate tradeoffs crisply to execs and engineers.
• AI fluency: Curious, adaptable, and proactive in exploring AI that responsibly improves scale outcomes.

Nice to Haves

• Scale scorecard: Company‑wide fitness functions (latency/throughput/error rates) are adopted and reviewed regularly.
• High‑impact wins: 2–3 bottlenecks removed with documented, reproducible testbeds; pXX latencies and error rates improve on top enterprise workloads; repeat P0s trend down.
• AI‑assisted scale engineering: AI‑driven anomaly detection reduces alert noise while improving signal; generative load testing and copilot runbooks are used in release/readiness checks for the top critical services; time‑to‑isolate regressions drops 20–30%.

Success in 6–12 Months

• Company‑wide scale scorecard in place; 2–3 high‑impact bottlenecks removed; top enterprise workloads show improved pXX latencies and error rates; fewer repeat P0s.

We use Covey as part of our hiring and / or promotional process. For jobs or candidates in NYC, certain features may qualify it as an AEDT. As part of the evaluation process we provide Covey with job requirements and candidate submitted applications. We began using Covey Scout for Inbound on April 3, 2025.

Please see the independent bias audit report covering our use of Covey here

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.

Base Pay Range For US Locations

$244,000 — $366,000 USD

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.

• Participation in the company’s annual cash bonus plan
• Variable compensation (OTE) for sales and customer success roles
• Equity
• Sign‑on payments
• A comprehensive range of health, welfare, and wellbeing benefits based on eligibility

This role may require up to 10% travel for purposes such as new hire onboarding, client or partner work if applicable, team meetings, and industry events. Travel is coordinated in advance.

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.

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.