Senior Engineering Manager, Cleo AI
Win on Data
Salary not provided
+ Equity
Senior and Expert level
London
Remote from Germany, Spain, UK
More information about location
AI personal finance assistant
Be an early applicant
AI personal finance assistant
201-500 employees
FintechB2CArtificial IntelligenceBankingPersonal financeFinancial ServicesSaaS
Be an early applicant
Salary not provided
+ Equity
Senior and Expert level
London
Remote from Germany, Spain, UK
More information about location
201-500 employees
FintechB2CArtificial IntelligenceBankingPersonal financeFinancial ServicesSaaS
Company mission
To change the world’s relationship with money.
Role
Who you are
- This is a role for someone who wants real ownership — not just of teams, but of a data foundation that defines Cleo’s future
- We’re looking for a Senior Engineering Manager with exceptional people leadership skills and a deep understanding of how to build a culture of technical excellence. On top of this:
- You are the kind of manager who is people first, technology second. We build environments that enable engineers to be the most impactful engineers possible
- We have to strike the right balance between short-term gains and long-term sustainability, and our engineering principles reflect this
- You’ve previously been a hands-on software developer, but these days get your energy from software architecture and organisation design, debugging people and processes, and delivering through others
- You are a great communicator
- We are a tight-knit engineering management team who support one another to be the best leaders possible
- You’re comfortable both challenging and being challenged, and you know how to create clarity in complex spaces
- You are comfortable with change and can adapt to constantly evolving circumstances. We’re growing the team, and we want you to grow with us on that journey
- You practise a learning and growth mindset
- We move quickly and experiment often, and we need you to help teams learn fast and improve continuously. Most importantly, you’re excited by owning a pillar that underpins the entire business: our financial understanding of users
What the job involves
- Cleo is radically different from the norm, and we’re looking for a Senior Engineering Manager to lead and evolve our engineers across cross-functional product squads within our Win on Data pillar — the intelligence engine at the heart of our business: tens of terabytes of transaction data today (and rapidly growing)
- What ChatGPT has done for the English language we want to do for financial transactions
- We want to really learn the language of transactions and be able to use that to make sure that we're making the best risk decisions and that we're having the best conversations that actually help our users
- In this role, you won’t just oversee delivery
- You’ll shape the teams responsible for transforming messy, fast-growing transaction data into the high-fidelity financial understanding that powers every feature we build
- From enrichment and categorisation to platform scalability and ML-enabled insight, your pillar underpins the experiences millions of users rely on to manage their money
- You’ll be responsible for the technical delivery and health of multiple squads as they build critical data capabilities that directly impact retention, LTV and new product development
- At the same time, you’ll own the wellbeing, growth and progression of your reports — creating an environment where engineers can do the best work of their careers
- You’ll lead all people management across your pillar
- That means hiring the right blend of Technical Leads, Data and Backend Engineers across levels, building a thoughtful headcount plan aligned to our ambition, and coaching individuals to stretch into bigger scope and influence
- You’ll actively develop our squad Leads into more senior leaders, strengthening succession and multiplying impact over time
- You’ll be accountable for engineering across several squads, partnering deeply with Product, Data Science, Machine Learning and Experience to build truly high-performing cross-functional teams
- This pillar operates at a significant scale – transaction data represents the majority of our data estate and is growing rapidly – so your ability to balance velocity with robustness will be key
- From a technical leadership perspective, you’ll raise the bar continuously
- You’ll identify opportunities to improve architecture and platform foundations, contribute meaningfully to design discussions, review and challenge technical proposals, and shape the longer-term technical roadmap for a pillar that the entire company depends on
- In the Win on Data pillar, everything we build depends on turning messy, large-scale transaction data into a complete, accurate and unified model of a user’s finances
- This is high-impact, high-scale work. Our transaction data represents the majority of our data estate and is growing rapidly. Every downstream experience - from core product features to ML-powered insights - relies on this foundation being robust, reliable and intelligently designed
- You’ll lead teams responsible for building and evolving this intelligence core: improving transaction enrichment quality, scaling our data and ML platforms, and enabling Cleo to create entirely new value propositions for users. Success here directly drives retention, LTV and our long-term product strategy
- You don’t just want to run teams. You want to shape the data foundations that power everything
- Cleo is built as a Ruby on Rails monolith with a single React Native app frontend, utilising TypeScript
- We also leverage Python for machine learning services and PostgreSQL for our database, all hosted on AWS
- Our CI/CD pipeline is fully automated, with production deployments happening on every merge via Heroku
- Our backend engineers deploy multiple times a week, and we release our frontend app to Google and Apple for review at least once a week
- While we take a pragmatic approach, we place a strong emphasis on quality. Our code is peer-reviewed, and we maintain automated testing using Minitest and CircleCI
- We're also actively working towards a more modular architecture, focusing on separating concerns to achieve all the benefits of microservices within a monolith, while progressively refactoring our code as we build new features
- Everyone in the engineering team contributes to driving our technical strategy, voices & ideas from all levels are valued: we are all owners at Cleo
Salary benchmarks
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
Top investors
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.
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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