What is your favorite part of working at Klaviyo?
Molly Duggan, Engineering Manager: My favorite part of working at Klaviyo is the people that I work with. Klaviyo has a culture of openness and collaboration that means that everybody I work with is really up for helping, up for anything that we need to collaborate on. And it’s just a really positive and collaborative environment that makes it a joy to come to work every day and get to work with my coworkers.
About Klaviyo
Powered by its built-in data platform and AI, Klaviyo combines marketing automation, analytics, and customer service into one unified solution, making it easy for businesses to know their customers and grow faster.
What attracted you to Klaviyo?
Duggan: There were a few different things that attracted me to Klaviyo. First off, I would say the scale that Klaviyo operates at. As a technologist, this is just really interesting to me. I was also very interested in the growth that Klaviyo seemed to be experiencing. I knew that this was gonna be a good opportunity for me to experience some growth with a company and see all kinds of changes and challenges that go along with that. Additionally, the ability to move fast really appealed to me. I want to be able to get solutions into the hands of customers as quickly as I can. And I knew that a company like Klaviyo just seemed like a great place to do that. And finally, Klaviyo's values. Klaviyo has a commitment to diversity and inclusion that just made it feel like a really welcoming place to be.
Why do you love working at Klaviyo?
Duggan: I think the thing that makes me feel the most fulfilled at Klaviyo is my team. I love to help my team and empower them to deliver solutions to the rest of engineering. I love sharing that satisfaction with them when they get to see people using things that we've built. I love helping my team members to grow their individual careers, to give them the mentoring and the resources that they need to get to their next level. It really makes me feel satisfied seeing them shine.
Describe the best thing about working at Klaviyo?
Manuel Ventero Pena, Engineering Manager: For me, the best thing about working at Klaviyo is that we're in a growth stage. And the fact that a company is in a growth stage means that there are a lot of opportunities for growth. I think that's always one of the most motivating factors for anyone that wants to develop their career. Second, I would say that Klaviyo is in a sweet spot in terms of its lifecycle. We're not a huge, bureaucratic company that moves very, very slow. And we're not a seed startup that is struggling financially. So I think that's great because it allows you to move fast without worrying about certain things. Third, I would say that it's the multi-national component. We have offices in Sydney, Boston, and London, and we're growing a lot in Europe. That's always very interesting because, first of all, that comes with the opportunities, and opportunities to meet people from different cultures. And who knows what's next after Europe.
How do you know Klaviyo cares about its people?
Ventero Pena: I think there are different angles to this. The first that comes to mind, in my opinion, is definitely the onboarding. When I joined the company, I was very surprised with how well set up was the onboarding. The fact that the company spends two to three weeks onboarding you and making sure that you're set up for success in different areas...it really speaks volumes about the company and its values.
The second thing that comes to mind is more engineering-specific and the different problems that exist around engineering. The first is the mentorship program allows you to basically pair with someone more senior than you that can help you with achieving your goals. And the second one is the rotation program. The rotation program allows you to move permanently or temporarily to another team, meet new people and learn new technologies.
What are the most interesting projects you’re working on at Klaviyo?
Ventero Pena: I joined Klaviyo in February, and I can think of two things that are very interesting to me. The first one is the product merchandising team, which basically maintains recommender systems at scale, allowing customers, our customers, to target their customers and send them specific recommendations. That basically requires querying vast amounts of data and running machine learning models efficiently. And then more recently, since the summer, I’ve been working on the natural language interfaces team. This team is using generative AI applications to solve different problems in our platform. This work is very interesting to me, especially using the latest generative AI applications, mostly because it is a field that is evolving so fast, and that is changing the way we interact with applications in many different domains. It’s very interesting to just feel like you’re ahead of the curve and basically working on something that is the state of the art when it comes to how applications can be built. And it’s such a paradigm shift just being able to build these things as they come up. It’s very interesting.
What attracted you to Klaviyo?
Josh Panka, Senior Engineering Manager: What attracted me to Klaviyo was really the people. It was really obvious when I sat down to interview initially how much the interviewers really cared about each other and each other's opinions. That created this space and environment during the interview process where I really wanted to be part of whatever that was. Cut to seven years later and I've been able to form countless relationships with my fellow Klaviyos and that environment that was created around seeing people being able to share those opinions with each other has really allowed me to share my opinions and grow my career here.
Why do you love working at Klaviyo?
Panka: I love working at Klaviyo because there’s a lack of settling and the company has a really ambitious vision for the future. With that ambitious vision for the future, you really see the wealth of opportunity that that creates for me and everybody else within this organization. Especially within the engineering org, that ambition has created a space for me and my co-workers to learn and grow and really establish ourselves in our careers.
When did you realize Klaviyo was the right place for you?
Panka: I realized that Klaviyo was the right place for me when within the first few months they delegated a lot of work to me and my co-workers and it was more of a hands-off environment that we were creating here. There was less micromanaging, which was the environment that I was coming from, and much more of a, hey, let’s focus on the value that we can give to our customers and focus on helping us as individual employees learn and grow through that.
