Greenhouse ·
full-timeSr. Lead - AI Engineer
Klaviyo · Boston, MA
Klaviyo is a technology company focused on providing a marketing automation platform that enables businesses to manage customer data and interactions at scale. As a Senior Lead AI Engineer, you will play a central role in evolving the company's core orchestration platform to integrate advanced AI-native capabilities. Your day-to-day responsibilities will involve architecting high-throughput, low-latency distributed systems and driving the technical vision for agentic workflows and automated decision-making. You will lead the adoption of AI-native engineering methodologies, design foundational frameworks for internal use, and mentor engineering teams to maintain high technical standards. This position requires close collaboration with product management, data science, and executive leadership to shape long-term platform architecture. This role is well-suited for an experienced backend leader with over eight years of professional software engineering experience, specifically in distributed systems and microservices. The ideal candidate possesses hands-on experience deploying production LLM workflows, RAG pipelines, or agentic frameworks, and demonstrates deep proficiency in Python, cloud infrastructure on AWS, and Kubernetes. You should be comfortable balancing technical rigor with rapid delivery in a high-traffic environment.
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 klaviyo.com/careers to see how we empower creators to own their own destiny. Job Title: Sr. Lead Software Engineer Location: Boston, MA This role is based in our Boston hub. We operate a hub‑first model, with regular in‑office collaboration expected. About the Role At Klaviyo, we believe the future of software isn’t just better productivity tools for humans—it’s intelligent systems that can run, optimize, and adapt themselves based on real-time outcome and reward signals. Having already built the infrastructure and applications that connect businesses with over 200,000 customers, billions of consumer profiles, and hundreds of billions of interaction events, we are now making foundational investments in Marketing AI and Service AI to power next-generation agentic capabilities across our entire ecosystem. The Klaviyo Orchestrate pillar drives the core platform experience, providing the high-throughput capabilities our customers use daily to manage and execute complex marketing workflows. This team balances strict Tier-1 availability and low-latency scalability requirements with rapid agility across the Klaviyo ecosystem. Internally, we have fully embraced AI-native engineering methodologies and are dedicated to putting sophisticated AI-native capabilities directly into the hands of our builder-customers. We are building a best-in-class, flexible orchestration platform designed to handle massive scale while continuously advancing reliability and performance to meet the expanding needs of our global customer base. How You’ll Make a Difference Architect and scale Klaviyo’s Core Orchestration platform, supporting high-traffic, low-latency services with extreme reliability. Drive the technical vision for integrating AI-driven agentic workflows and automated decision-making into core customer interactions. Lead the adoption of AI-native software development practices, continually improving engineering productivity and delivery speed across the team. Design foundational frameworks and services adopted across engineering teams, championing high technical standards through design reviews and mentorship. Partner closely with product management, data science, design, and executive leaders to shape strategic roadmaps and long-term platform architecture. Who You Are Experienced Backend Leader: 8+ years of professional software engineering experience centered on distributed systems, microservices architecture, and high-availability backend platform ownership. AI & Agentic Systems Practitioner: Hands-on experience shipping production LLM workflows, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, or agentic frameworks with a solid understanding of evals, prompt architecture, and fine-tuning. Distributed Systems Specialist: Proven track record of architecting event-driven architectures, asynchronous processing pipelines, and message queues (e.g., Kafka, Celery, SQS, Redis) for heavy throughput workloads. Python & Tooling Mastery: Deep proficiency in Python and modern frameworks (FastAPI, Django) alongside experience with data processing platforms and object-relational mapping tools. Cloud Infrastructure Native: Strong expertise with AWS, Kubernetes, CI/CD automation, and modern observability suites, integrating cloud architecture seamlessly into system design. Quality & Evals Focused: Experience establishing automated evaluation frameworks for AI models, balancing latency, accuracy, cost, and safety in production environments. Cross-Functional Influencer: A technical leader who elevates team performance through architectural direction, collaborative problem-solving, and clear communication across engineering and business domains. Collaborative and customer‑first. You’re comfortable collaborating directly with PMs, ML engineers, and customers; you can translate between customer needs, product goals, and technical constraints, and you care deeply about the customer experience. AI-First Engineer: Active use of AI coding tools and modern agentic development workflows in daily work to accelerate innovation and shorten feedback cycles. Customer-Centric Mindset: Driven by user outcomes, with a knack for translating complex customer needs into resilient software architecture. Nice to Haves Experience designing or integrating shared AI/ML platforms consumed by multiple internal engineering teams. Domain expertise in MarTech, e-commerce platforms, personalization engines, or real-time event streaming. Massachusetts Applicants: It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie dete
| Role | Sr. Lead - AI Engineer |
|---|---|
| Company | Klaviyo |
| Location | Boston, MA |
| Type | full-time |
| Compensation | Not disclosed |
| Posted | 2026-10-16 |
| Deadline | Rolling |
Typical process for this type of role
A general guide — the exact steps for this specific listing may vary; check the original posting for details.
- 1ApplicationSubmit your resume through the apply link.
- 2ScreeningRecruiter reviews your background against the role.
- 3AssessmentA technical test, assignment, or coding round, depending on the role.
- 4Interview(s)One or more rounds with the hiring team.
- 5OfferOffer letter with compensation and start date.
Before you apply
0/4About Klaviyo
Klaviyo, Inc. is an AI-first B2C CRM platform founded in 2012 and headquartered in Boston. The company provides a unified solution that integrates marketing automation, customer service, analytics, and a data platform to help businesses manage customer relationships. By centralizing behavioral, transactional, and engagement data, Klaviyo enables brands to deliver personalized, omnichannel campaigns across email, SMS, WhatsApp, and mobile push notifications. The platform utilizes AI agents to automate marketing tasks, resolve customer service inquiries, and optimize campaign performance. Klaviyo currently serves over 205,000 brands across more than 100 countries, processing billions of events and managing billions of customer profiles daily to support business growth.
More at Klaviyo
Other jobs at Klaviyo
- Senior Director, Customer Success, APJ · Sydney, AU
- Senior Lead AI Engineer - G&A Systems · Boston, MA
- Lead Integrations Engineer - G&A Systems · Boston, MA
- Principal Partner Manager II · Boston, MA; Denver, CO; San Francisco, CA
- Software Engineer, Conversational Products & Agent Workflows · Boston, MA
Explore Related Placements
// similar opportunities
You might also like
Senior Lead AI Engineer - G&A Systems
Klaviyo
At Klaviyo, we value the unique backgrounds, experiences and perspectives each Klaviyo (we call ourselves Klaviyos) brings to our workplace each and every day. ...
Lead AI/ML Engineer
Antino Labs Private Limited
Lead AI/ML Engineer at Antino Labs Private Limited 10 recruiters Posted by anju kushwaha Apply now Gurugram · 4 - 6 years · ₹20L - ₹50L / yr · Profitable · Post...
Lead AI/ML Engineer
Japan Dev
Lead AI/ML Engineer...
Lead Engineer
Digit Insurance
Lead Engineer at Digit Insurance Agency job via Talentojcom by Bhavesh Kiroula Apply now Pune · 7 - 10 years · ₹14L - ₹25L / yr · Profitable · Posted 15 Sep 202...
Lead Integrations Engineer - G&A Systems
Klaviyo
At Klaviyo, we value the unique backgrounds, experiences and perspectives each Klaviyo (we call ourselves Klaviyos) brings to our workplace each and every day. ...
Lead Engineer, Applied AI (customer Agent)
Klaviyo
At Klaviyo, we value the unique backgrounds, experiences and perspectives each Klaviyo (we call ourselves Klaviyos) brings to our workplace each and every day. ...