Senior Language Manager, German (8 month FTC) in London

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.

London, UK (Hybrid: 3 days p/week in-office)

This is an 8 month FTC maternity-cover. We are looking for an experienced hands‑on Senior Language Manager to own and optimise the language and localisation strategy for Germany. Native/ fluent German language skills are essential.

Job Summary

Localisation efforts at Klaviyo are centred around linguistic and cultural excellence, teamwork and scale. We own the linguistic and cultural quality of every touchpoint a German customer has with Klaviyo: the product, the website, marketing campaigns, customer education, and partner and developer portals. Our work is about providing high‑quality localisation and an experience that feels locally relevant and fuels international growth for both our customers and Klaviyo.

You will step directly into a fully embedded, senior individual‑contributor position and own everything the current person owns, with full continuity responsibility. We need someone who can hit the ground running and carry the German market at the same quality bar from day one.

Your Impact

• Own the German Language Infrastructure. Proactively manage the German style guide and glossary as living documents, ensuring our Language Service Provider delivers consistent, high‑quality content across the entire customer journey.
• Own German Lingual Quality across all customer touch points ensuring we deliver the best German customer experience.
• Champion the German customer experience. This includes ensuring search is optimised for German, product QA, website optimisation, and mapping the customer journey to identify gaps and opportunities.

Duties

• Develop and maintain linguistic and cultural standards and guidelines, define quality expectations across the whole localised customer journey, including supporting the development of style guides, glossaries, tone and voice of the Klaviyo Product and Content.
• Review German translation and monitor the linguistic quality, providing feedback and context to translation teams to ensure the best resource fit for the highest quality impact.
• Communicate proactively with cross-functional teams to anticipate, identify and fix linguistic and localisation issues related to Germany.
• Proactively engage with stakeholders (e.g., Product, Marketing, Customer Education) for additional context and insights on high‑priority content for localisation to define and influence the best creative, linguistic and localisation approach.
• Facilitate collaboration between internal stakeholders and vendors, ensuring the necessary resources have access to relevant information and advising on the best course of action regarding localisation processes.
• Collaborate closely with the Localisation team and internal stakeholders to collect relevant cultural and linguistic information about Klaviyo Germany and support the localisation effort in bringing this content to the global audience.
• Proactively contribute to the creation of efficient, effective localisation processes and optimisation of those over time.
• Train, develop and manage a highly‑effective team of German linguists through our localisation supplier that consistently delivers high‑quality output.
• Be a champion internally for the German Klaviyo customer.
• Perform other related duties as assigned.

Who You Are

• 5+ years of experience in a comparable localisation role on the buyer/client side.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Languages, Translation, Localisation or International Studies.
• Fluency in English and native knowledge of German for Germany; essential.
• Proven experience in translation, localisation and language quality management.
• Demonstrated experience in localisation of Product, Marketing and Support content for Germany, with scalable localisation infrastructures and language quality frameworks.
• Experience with Smartling or similar TMS platforms (a plus).
• Deep understanding of localisation specificities and pitfalls.
• Experience in creative writing (a bonus).
• Authorisation to work in the UK without restriction.

Soft Skills

• Strong business acumen with proven stakeholder management skills.
• Ability to show initiative and work independently, and drive initiatives at a strategic level.
• Ability to hold teams accountable to a high quality standard.
• Excellent presentation, communication, and interpersonal skills.

Benefits & Compensation

Base Pay Range: £56,000—£84,000 GBP. In addition to base salary, the total compensation package may include participation in the company’s annual cash bonus plan, variable compensation for sales and customer success roles, equity, sign‑on payments and a comprehensive range of health, welfare and wellbeing benefits based on eligibility. Travel may require up to 10% of the time for purposes such as new hire onboarding, client or partner work, team meetings and industry events. Travel is coordinated in advance.