Our Black in Tech series features the career path & advice from Black professionals in the tech industry. In this Q&A, Uche Ugwoaba, Engineering Manager at Klaviyo shares her story.
Where did you grow up and what were you like as a child? What did your parents do for work?
When I was younger, I wanted to be a soccer player. If not that, a firefighter. But if I’m being honest, underneath all of it, I really just wanted to be comfortable.
By “comfortable,” I mean I wanted the ability to live life the way I saw fit, and to provide for myself and my family. I wanted to be able to experience the world – travel, see and experience new things, and have the flexibility to work from where I wanted sometimes. That was always motivating for me.
Where did you go to college, and what did you study?
I went to Western Washington University and I studied computer science. But I’ll also be real…I almost quit the program twice. Both times, I talked with my dean of students and an advisor in the department. Those conversations helped me stay in it. Looking back, I’m glad I stuck with it, even when I wasn’t sure.
What inspired you to get into tech?
I’ve always been a gamer. As a kid, I was fascinated by the idea that the games I loved were really just zeros and ones underneath it all. I was also always tinkering, taking apart and upgrading tower PCs as early as middle school, just to understand how they worked.
I didn’t start coding seriously until college, but I had early exposure through the MySpace days. People forget that customizing those pages was basic HTML and a little JavaScript. That was probably the first time I touched “code,” even if it was informal.
What really pulled me in, though, was problem solving. Video games, at the end of the day, are problem solving. It doesn’t matter if it’s Halo, Tetris, Call of Duty, Among Us…the game presents a problem, and your job is to solve it. That mindset translated well to engineering.
What’s your current role and scope?
I’m the Engineering Manager for the Identities and Organizations team. We own authentication, authorization, users and organizations, and platform anti-abuse, making sure people are who they say they are, have the right access, and that content meets our acceptable use standards. We also build the core frameworks that enable other teams to ship customer-facing features.
I joined Klaviyo as a senior engineer, moved into a tech lead role, and eventually into management. As my scope has grown, so has my responsibility, along with more opportunities to learn and help other engineers grow.
What brought you to Klaviyo and what keeps you here?
Before Klaviyo, I worked at a very established company where everything was built internally. But I wasn’t learning what I consider public domain knowledge. I wasn’t getting deep exposure to the tools and building blocks that people use everywhere else, things like cloud services and common infrastructure patterns. I wanted to work in an environment where I had to understand those things deeply through the job itself.
I came to Klaviyo to learn. I’m still here because I’ve been learning every single day.
The opportunity to learn is the biggest thing. Klaviyo is a fantastic learning environment. Things move quickly, the work is high scale, and it’s highly customer-focused.
If you’re thinking about joining Klaviyo, I’ll keep it simple:
- Be ready to learn.
- Be ready to work.
- There’s a lot of opportunity if you’re hungry.
What’s different about building at Klaviyo?
In my experience, Klaviyo has been vertically aligned in a way that feels like a startup. If you build the front end, you also own the back end. You own the views, the APIs, the server layer, the database layer. If you own a product feature, you own everything that backs it.
That was a major difference from my earlier experience, where so much was abstracted away. Previously, I didn’t really have to think about cost, sizing, or the deeper tradeoffs. Here, you do.
That end-to-end thinking has been the thing I’ve enjoyed most.
How has your approach to building products changed working here?
One of the biggest areas I’ve grown in was approaching problems from the customer perspective.
Earlier in my career, I tended to start from the technical solution. How do I get from point A to point B? What’s the cleanest implementation?
As I’ve grown in my career, especially at Klaviyo, I’ve flipped that. Now I start with what the customer should see and how they want to interact with it. What’s the actual user story? What are the business requirements?
Klaviyo creates an environment where you get constant reps connecting customer needs to technical decisions. That shift has made me a stronger engineer and a stronger leader because I’m not just thinking about code. I’m thinking about impact.
What’s a project you’re proud of?
One of the earlier projects I took on at my time at Klaviyo was the Portfolio Framework. I was a tech lead on it, along with a couple other people.
It became one of Klaviyo’s most loved features that was released in 2024. What mattered to me was seeing the full loop. Meeting with customers, understanding what they needed, and then delivering something that they truly appreciated.
Seeing that tangible impact, knowing you helped shape something that people are actively using and valuing, was really cool.
What types of programs and initiatives does Klaviyo have that support DEI?
Klaviyo has KRGs (Klaviyo Resource Groups) which bring members together around a shared identity, and/or background. I’m a member of the BLACC Resource Group (Black Leaders for Advancing Community and Culture), and my participation in that group and the relationships within it are a big part of what keeps me motivated day to day. We have monthly meetings, and it’s been a really meaningful community.
What advice would you give to others trying to break into tech?
First, internships matter for those that are still of college age. Get experience wherever you can.
But the biggest thing I tell people is this: Done is better than perfect. Progress is better than nothing.
I’ve seen people get stuck waiting for the perfect job or the perfect internship. If it takes longer than expected, they stop doing anything else. No projects. No building. No side work. Nothing that keeps them moving forward.
That’s how you fall behind.
For my first job, I moved across the country on credit cards. No relocation support. I did it because getting my foot in the door was better than sitting on the sidelines waiting for the ideal opportunity.
Second, set clear goals. Have a plan and a backup plan.
I have a saying that sounds negative, but it works for me. “Shoot for the ground so when you hit it, you’re not surprised.” What I mean is, if something doesn’t go your way, you’re not shocked. You already know your next step. You keep moving.
