Applied Research Engineer, Cleo AI
$160-250k
+ Equity
AI personal finance assistant
Be an early applicant
AI personal finance assistant
201-500 employees
Be an early applicant
$160-250k
+ Equity
201-500 employees
Company mission
To change the world’s relationship with money.
Role
Who you are
- You’re deeply technical
- MSc or PhD in Machine Learning, Computer Science, Statistics or a related quantitative field
- Strong theoretical grounding in optimisation, deep learning, generalisation, and experimental design
- Comfortable deriving, implementing, and stress-testing novel approaches
- Advanced proficiency in Python and modern ML frameworks (e.g. PyTorch)
- You think like a scientist, but build like an engineer
- You design clean experiments with clear hypotheses and measurable outcomes
- You care about reproducibility, evaluation quality, and statistical rigour
- You can turn research ideas into working systems, not just papers
- You understand production trade-offs even if you’re not the one deploying
- You operate at the right altitude
- You can go deep into model internals when needed
- You can zoom out and connect research work to product impact
- You’re comfortable with ambiguity and self-directed problem discovery
- For Lead level
- You’ve led significant research initiatives with measurable outcomes
- You’ve mentored others and elevated technical standards around you
- You influence roadmaps, not just experiments
What the job involves
- We’re looking for an Applied Research Scientist (Mid → Lead) to push the frontier of how AI powers Cleo
- This isn’t a purely academic role. And it’s not a pure production ML role either
- You’ll sit in the space between cutting-edge research and real-world impact - developing novel approaches in areas like large language models, reasoning systems, personalisation, optimisation, and evaluation - and seeing the most successful prototypes through to impact on Cleo's intelligence
- At mid level, you’ll independently design and run high-quality research that feeds directly into product bets
- At lead level, you’ll help shape our research direction - identifying high-leverage problems, setting technical standards, and mentoring others while staying hands-on
- You’ll work closely with ML Engineers, Data Scientists and Product teams to ensure research doesn’t live in notebooks, it ships
- Identify and frame ambiguous, high-value problems across conversational AI, personalisation, optimisation or generative systems
- Design rigorous experiments and evaluation frameworks
- Prototype novel architectures, training strategies, or inference approaches
- Push beyond baseline implementations and improve measurable performance
- Build working prototypes that demonstrate clear user or business impact
- Partner with ML Engineers to productionise successful approaches
- Balance scientific rigour with practical constraints (latency, cost, reliability)
- Improve how we evaluate AI systems - especially generative outputs
- Stay ahead of state-of-the-art research
- Introduce better experimentation standards and research hygiene
- Contribute to internal knowledge-sharing and technical discussions
- Define research priorities aligned to company strategy
- Mentor scientists and engineers
- Drive large AI initiatives, coordinating multiple engineers and managing stakeholder expectations
Application process
- Interview with a Recruiter (30 mins)
- Interview with the Hiring Manager (30 mins)
- Python Programming Interview (45 mins)
- Whiteboard Interview (60 mins)
- Technical Discussion (60 mins)
Our take
People are increasingly not satisfied with the products being offered by traditional banks, which have proven slow to react to the needs of younger consumers who expect more from their everyday experiences.
Cleo was one of the first companies to make great use of chatbots that sit within Facebook's messenger app. This chatbot-first approach and Gen Z user base have given it strong virality. It now has millions of registered users, 99% of which are based in the US, leading to a decision to take a year break from the UK market to focus on its US Gen Z customers. And after a successful year in the US its now eyeing up a return to the UK.
Its Series C funding will help the company to double down in the US, where it will make a significant increase in employee headcount, and enable Cleo to maintain and expand its service during an economic downturn.
Financial advice delivered via bots is a crowded space, so Cleo benefits from having a strong brand presence. It has gone for very bold, fun, Gen Z-focused messaging which helps it to stand out from competitors such as Emma, Plum, and Chip.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Funding (last 2 of 5 rounds)
Jun 2022
$80m
SERIES C
Dec 2020
$44m
SERIES B
Total funding: $137.5m
Company benefits
- Meaningful equity with early exercise, plus top-ups on promotion
- Up to 26 weeks’ parental leave
- Paid 1-month sabbatical every 4 years
- Comprehensive health, dental & vision insurance
- Pension/401K match up to 6%
- Learning & development budget
- Mental health support via Spill
- Flexible working for a healthy work–life balance
- Work remotely from one of our hiring locations, with a hybrid option in our London office (1+ day/week)
- Annual company off-sites
- Company-wide performance reviews every 6 months
- Clear progression plans with opportunities to lead, grow, and challenge the status quo
- We’ll cover your OpenAI subscription
Company values
- Make it Happen - Own the outcome. Lend a hand, take a hand. Fast execution.
- No bullsh*t - Intellectually honest. Go hard on problems, not people. Data-backed decision making.
- Learn at Speed - Jump in and figure it out. Dig deep, do it right. Learn what matters.
- Bring Good Vibes - Read the room, lift the room. Show up for others. Keep it real, keep it positive.
Company HQ
London, UK
Leadership
Barnaby Hussey-Yeo
(Founder & CEO)Previously a Data Scientist at Wonga, one of the companies that pioneered the smart use of data for loan decisions. Joined Entrepreneur First where Cleo was formed.
Salary benchmarks
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Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Cleo AI
- We’ve set up an internal committee of truly passionate people that are dedicated to ensuring Diversity and Inclusion is embedded in how we all operate as a team. We agree on meaningful actions, and get on with implementing them. We have three main focuses right now, which are:
- 1) Improving SocioEconomic diversity across the company
- 2) Increasing the number of women in Leadership roles
- 3) More community outreach
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