Systems and methods are provided that enable a general framework for partitioning application-defined jobs (e.g., computation) in a scalable environment. The general framework decouples partitioning of a job from the other aspects of the job. As a result, the effort required to define the application-defined computation in a scalable environment is reduced or minimized, as the user is not required to provide a partitioning algorithm. The general framework further allows a user to provide load balancing conditions to allow for modification of how partitions are assigned.