About this role
The engineering team at Klaviyo builds conversational AI systems that allow brands to serve customers at a scale impossible for human support teams. As a Staff Engineer for Applied AI, you will guide the technical and product direction for a core area of the Customer Agent from architecture to production, tackling complex challenges in orchestration, guardrails, and non-deterministic failure handling.
Operating with startup speed backed by enterprise resources, you will remain hands-on while defining patterns adopted by other engineers and partnering with cross-functional leaders. This role exists to drive the evolution of 0-to-1 agentic products beyond the demo stage and into reliable production environments. Ideal candidates are experienced technical leaders who have scaled production agentic systems, possess deep operational scar tissue regarding AI reliability and security, and thrive on solving ambiguous engineering problems.
What you will do
- Set the technical and product direction for a core area of the Customer Agent from architecture through production.
- Tackle challenging technical problems across orchestration, evaluation, guardrails, memory, context, and failure handling for non-deterministic systems.
- Write and ship code, review system designs, and make critical engineering calls when no obvious right answer exists.
- Define reusable architectural patterns and mentor engineering peers through design reviews.
- Partner closely with product, design, data science, and go-to-market leaders to shape platform capabilities.
- Evaluate emerging artificial intelligence technologies and integrate viable solutions into production environments.
What you need
- Demonstrated experience building, scaling, and supporting production agentic systems rather than just prototypes.
- Direct operational background managing non-deterministic system reliability, guardrails, and security against misuse as usage grows.
- Prior experience owning technical and product direction for a significant domain and shipping solutions that others built upon.
- Hands-on coding, architecture review, and production debugging capabilities.
- Clear communication skills capable of translating complex technical trade-offs across engineering and product audiences.
Nice to have
- Experience working on a multi-tenant agent platform at production scale with external customers configuring agent behavior on shared infrastructure.
- Experience building 0-to-1 products or working in fast-paced startup environments.
- A track record with production evaluation systems, AI observability, or human-in-the-loop workflows for LLM-powered products.
Benefits
- Annual cash bonus plan participation
- Equity opportunities
- Sign-on payments
- Comprehensive range of health, welfare, and wellbeing benefits
Skills and tech stack
Questions candidates ask
Where is this role located?
The Customer Agent team is based in Boston, MA and operates as an in-office role.
What is the salary range for this position?
The base salary for this position ranges from $176,000 to $264,000 USD, determined by factors including job-related skills, relevant experience, education, and work location.
Does the position involve any travel?
The role may require up to 10% travel for purposes such as new hire onboarding, client or partner work, team meetings, and industry events, which are coordinated in advance.