Python Engineer, Cleo AI
+ Equity
More information about location
AI personal finance assistant
Be an early applicant
AI personal finance assistant
201-500 employees
Be an early applicant
+ Equity
More information about location
201-500 employees
Company mission
To change the world’s relationship with money.
Role
Who you are
- We are looking for a mid/senior level Python Engineer
- Software engineering and best practises - proficiency in Python, code quality and maintainability
- Containerisation & orchestration; Docker, Kubernetes
- Understanding value and product thinking
- Experience working cross-functionally; Ability to work with data scientists, software engineers, and product managers to align ML initiatives with business goals
- Able to break down complex problems into smaller components and propose technical solutions
- Can design scalable, maintainable systems and reason about trade-offs
- Considers:
- Scalability (horizontal/vertical scaling, async patterns)
- Maintainability (readability, modularity, testability)
- Resilience & fault-tolerance (error handling, retries, graceful degradation)
- In-depth knowledge of Python 3.x, standard libraries, and core language features
- Strong experience with frameworks/tools such as:
- Web frameworks: Django, Flask, FastAPI
- Data handling: Pydantic, Pandas, SQLAlchemy,
- Async programming: asyncio, concurrent.futures
- Can reason about:
- When to use synchronous vs asynchronous approaches
- Performance optimization and profiling
- Memory management and garbage collection
- Shapes and enforces best practices:
- Code structure & modularity
- Clean, idiomatic Python (PEP8, typing, docstrings)
- Strong in testing and automation:
- Pytest; unittest, integration testing
- CI/CD pipelines and coverage metrics (CircleCI, Github/GitLab workflows)
- Version control mastery
- Familiarity with monitoring, logging, and alerting (e.g., Sentry, Prometheus, OTEL)
- Understanding of containerization and deployment:
- Docker (required)
- Kubernetes or other orchestration tools
- Cloud experience (AWS/GCP/Azure), especially services relevant to running Python applications
- Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation, Pulumi)
- Security considerations: secret management, secure coding practices, dependency scanning
- Basic networking knowledge (HTTP, REST, gRPC, sockets)
- Strong grounding in:
- Data structures & algorithms
- Time and space complexity analysis
- Concurrency and distributed systems
- Knowledge of design patterns and when to apply them
- Can clearly explain technical decisions and trade-offs to engineers and non-engineers
- Helps shape technical direction and advocates for best practices across the team
- Comfortable writing documentation and RFCs
- Active in knowledge sharing and mentoring junior/mid engineers
- Provides thoughtful code reviews, balancing detail with pragmatism
- Helps drive team technical initiatives
- Experience contributing to cross-functional teams (product, design, DevOps)
- Ability to work in agile environments, balancing delivery with technical quality
- Proven track record of building or contributing to production-grade systems that are used at scale
- Delivering incrementally
- Doing the simple thing
- Customer focused
- More seniority will consider impact across Cleo as a business
Desirable
- Infrastructure as Code; Terraform
- Cloud experience (AWS/GCP/Azure)
- Data System design and breaking down work
- Monitoring and alerting how it pertains to data system -> also this is important, not strictly necessary as something that can be learnt
- Deploying and operating APIs -> moving more into the ability to deploy/operate microservices. Happy if this person has not done this, but willing to learn
- Experience building and managing Data pipelines e.g: Kubeflow, MLflow, Airflow, Flyte
- Experience in MLOps
What the job involves
- The right candidate will support our product teams in achieving their OKRs while championing best practices in python engineering and MLOps
- In this role, you'll work directly with product teams to ensure they effectively adopt the tools, frameworks, and processes provided by the Data Platform team, enabling them to build scalable, efficient, and reliable data and ML solutions
- You'll help teams implement and operate robust python services, monitoring strategies, and cost-efficient practices to improve their data-driven capabilities
- At the same time, you'll act as a crucial bridge between product teams and the Data Platform team, gathering insights on real-world challenges, gaps, and pain points in the existing platform
- By surfacing these issues and collaborating with the platform team, you'll contribute to the continuous improvement of our internal tooling and infrastructure, ensuring it better serves the needs of our engineers and data scientists
- This is an opportunity to blend hands-on engineering with strategic impact, influencing both product success and the evolution of our data platform
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
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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