Jake Dewar
All projects

Klaviyo Demo Studio

Klaviyo's internal demo platform. Solutions Engineers use it to build, configure, and run customer demos.

klaviyo.com
Role
Senior Demo Experience Engineer
Timeline
2025 – Present
Built with
React · TypeScript · Klaviyo APIs · Internal Tooling

The problem

Klaviyo's Solutions Engineering team relied on hand-built demo environments. Setups were fragile, took hours per demo to prepare, and varied widely from SE to SE.

The design direction

Klaviyo Demo Studio (KDS) lets an SE spin up a tailored demo environment in minutes. I co-designed the architecture with Amplify Demos engineering, helped define the product roadmap, and built core features.

Decision process

How the design took shape

Each choice follows the same path: identify the signal, make a focused decision, and be explicit about what that decision leaves out.

  1. 01

    What should be standardized?

    Signal
    Every Solutions Engineer assembled demos differently, which made preparation slow and outcomes inconsistent.
    Decision
    Move the repeatable setup work into one purpose-built studio while preserving room to tailor the result for a customer.
    Tradeoff
    The product standardizes the foundation of a demo, not the judgment an SE uses to tell the right customer story.
  2. 02

    Where should product and platform decisions meet?

    Signal
    The workflow belonged to Solutions Engineering, while the supporting demo infrastructure crossed into a partner engineering team's domain.
    Decision
    Co-design the architecture with Amplify Demos engineering and shape the roadmap from direct SE workflow knowledge.
    Tradeoff
    Shared ownership requires more coordination, but keeps the experience useful to SEs and credible as internal infrastructure.
  3. 03

    What was the first success measure?

    Signal
    The clearest pain was preparation time: building a dependable environment could take hours before a customer conversation began.
    Decision
    Prioritize the path from intent to a ready, tailored demo environment before expanding the surrounding feature set.
    Tradeoff
    The first version focused on removing setup friction rather than trying to cover every part of demo delivery.

What shipped

  • Co-founded the Demo Experience Engineering function inside Solutions Engineering
  • Designed and built the first version of KDS
  • Defined the technical architecture with Amplify Demos engineering
  • Cut demo prep time from hours to minutes for the commercial SE team
  • Operate as both IC and PM on the team