Payments Analytics Manager, Cleo AI

• This role is ideal for someone who thrives at the intersection of data, systems thinking, and commercial impact
• You’ll be comfortable working with complex, interconnected systems, familiar with interpreting ML model outputs and feature engineering trade-offs, and motivated by optimising for resilience, efficiency, and margin
• Domain expertise in payments is a plus, but not required
• What matters most is a strong analytical foundation, commercial mindset, and the ability to learn quickly
• Strong analytical skills with fluency in SQL; experience with Python or R is a plus
• Ability to interpret and communicate model performance metrics, feature importance, and confidence intervals
• Background in collaborating with data science or engineering teams on feature engineering and model evaluation
• Experience building and maintaining monitoring systems and alerting frameworks
• Commercially minded: able to translate payments success metrics into company-level impact
• Comfortable learning new domains quickly and navigating complex, interconnected systems
• Leadership & Influence
• Experience managing or mentoring analysts and structuring team output for maximum impact
• Skilled at turning technical analytics into actionable recommendations for senior stakeholders
• Able to balance urgent monitoring needs with long-term framework and optimisation work

Desirable

• We’re looking for a Payments Analytics Manager to lead the measurement, monitoring, and optimisation of Cleo’s payments infrastructure
• This is a high-impact role at the heart of how money moves through our platform
• You’ll own the frameworks, metrics, and deep-dive analyses that ensure our payments systems run smoothly, efficiently, and in a commercially sustainable way
• You’ll manage a team of analysts focused on payments success, routing, and intelligence, delivering clear insights that help us optimise cost, reliability, and scalability
• You’ll set the standards for monitoring and diagnosis, identify the drivers of payment performance shifts, and shape how we evaluate and implement changes across our payments systems
• 1. Payments Performance Measurement & Monitoring
• Own the design and maintenance of Cleo’s payments analytics framework, including success rates, latency, cost per transaction, recovery rates, and vendor performance
• Own and maintain dashboards and alerts for early detection of anomalies in payment success, routing, or infrastructure stability
• Ensure definitions, thresholds, and escalation processes are consistent, documented, and aligned across the business
• 2. Model Understanding & Monitoring
• Detect and diagnose feature shift or concept drift in payments routing models
• Lead investigations into deviations in success or cost, distinguishing between model-driven, operational, and external causes
• 3. Lead Analytical Deep-Dives
• Lead root cause analysis for deteriorations in payment success, latency, or cost efficiency
• Quantify the commercial impact of new or changing payments features, vendors, or retry strategies
• 5. Forecasting & Scenario Analysis
• Produce monthly forecasts for payment costs, success rates, and vendor throughput, in collaboration with Finance
• Build scenario models for vendor changes, volume spikes, and product roadmap shifts
• Conduct variance analysis comparing actuals vs forecast, with clear attribution of differences
• 6. Team Leadership & Stakeholder Management
• Manage and mentor payments analysts, setting clear priorities and deliverables
• Translate complex analytical findings into clear business implications for senior leadership
• Build strong cross-functional relationships with Engineering, Product, Data Science, Commercial, and Finance