Special Projects Lead, Cleo

New Ventures

£102.5-127.7k

+Equity

Senior level
London

1-2 days a week in office

Cleo

AI personal finance assistant

Be an early applicant

Cleo

AI personal finance assistant

201-500 employees

FintechB2CArtificial IntelligenceBankingPersonal financeFinancial ServicesSaaS

Be an early applicant

£102.5-127.7k

+Equity

Senior level
London

1-2 days a week in office

201-500 employees

FintechB2CArtificial IntelligenceBankingPersonal financeFinancial ServicesSaaS

Company mission

To help millions of people improve their financial health, and relate to them in a way their banks never could.

Role

Who you are

  • 0→1 Proposition Development Experience: You have senior experience in developing new propositions from scratch (either as a PM or outside of product)
  • Strategic Research and Commercial Outcomes: Proven ability to lead strategic research initiatives and deliver commercial outcomes that impact revenue and growth
  • Complex Initiative Leadership: Experience in running complex initiatives in fast-moving environments with multiple stakeholders, ideally with B2C experience
  • Stakeholder Management: You're adept at managing senior stakeholders, including founders, to drive alignment and decision-making
  • Fintech Experience: Experience in fintech is a plus, but not required
  • High Growth Environment: You thrive in fast-paced, high-growth companies and have a bias toward action and speed

What the job involves

  • As Special Projects Lead - New Ventures, you will be responsible for leading Cleo’s New Product Concept Discovery process from end-to-end, driving the development and validation of new, high-impact product concepts aimed at diversifying Cleo's revenue streams
  • You will oversee the creation of foundational insights from market and customer research, facilitate ideation, and collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure each idea is thoroughly vetted
  • You’ll be instrumental in shaping Cleo’s strategy to discover new user needs, explore emerging trends, and identify opportunities within and outside the fintech space
  • This is a high-impact, senior role where your work will directly contribute to Cleo’s diversification goals by generating a pipeline of validated, revenue-generating product concepts
  • You will need to drive pace, clarity, and alignment across Cleo's leadership while ensuring the smooth handover of validated ideas to product squads for build and launch
  • Lead Concept Discovery End-to-End: You will manage the entire pre-build pipeline, including research, ideation, concept development, and concept vetting
  • Validate New Product Concepts: Collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure each concept is rigorously vetted for commercial viability, market potential, and customer impact
  • Drive Alignment with Leadership: You will work closely with senior leadership to ensure strategic prioritization and alignment on New Bets strategy, concept definitions, and go/no-go decisions
  • Concept Development: Collaborate closely with product and design teams to transform initial ideas into well-defined hypotheses, shaping the value proposition, product vision, and business model
  • Develop Foundational Insights: Work with PMM, research, and analytics teams to conduct comprehensive market and customer research, identifying whitespace opportunities and customer needs that can fuel ideation
  • Manage Idea Intake Process: Own the volume, quality, and relevance of ideas produced, using a combination of always-on and targeted workshops to ensure a steady pipeline of opportunities
  • Smooth Handover: Ensure the validated concepts are seamlessly transitioned to the product squads for MLP development, with a clear understanding of underlying assumptions and strategies for scaling

Application process

  • We aim to move as fast as possible. Usually 2-3 weeks is enough time for us all to get to know each other
  • Step 1: 30 mins video call with a member of our Talent Team to find out more about your experience and why you’re potentially interested in Cleo
  • Step 2:
  • 1 hour with the Hiring Manager - Tom May, Product Director - New Ventures
  • 30 mins with Alex from our Commercial Team
  • Step 3: Take home task interview, presented to our Product Director and CMO
  • Step 4: 45 minutes each with two cross-functional peers

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.

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 headshot

Kirsty

Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle

Insights

Strong hiring activity
Rocket List 2021
Top investors

Many candidates hear
back within 2 weeks

43% female employees

24% employee growth in 12 months

Company

Employee endorsements

Nice people

"Cleople are unmatched. The vibes, the energy, the friendships. I genuinely love my colleagues and have developed real-life friendships. I don't know..."

Funding (last 2 of 5 rounds)

Jun 2022

$80m

SERIES C

Dec 2020

$44m

SERIES B

Total funding: $137.5m

Company benefits

  • 25 days of Annual leave a year + public holidays (+ an additional day for every year you spend at Cleo)
  • 401k matching in the US and 6% employer-matched pension in the UK
  • Online courses, £150 annual budget & internal training to level up your skills
  • Regular socials and activities, online and in-person
  • Online mental health support via Spill
  • 1 month paid sabbatical after every 4 years with Cleo
  • OpenAI Plus subscription
  • Electric vehicle salary sacrifice scheme and cycle-to-work scheme
  • Life assurance and income protection via AIG
  • Medical insurance via Axa and Healthcare cash plan via Medicash
  • Performance reviews every 8 months. Generous pay increases for high performers and high-growth team members. Equity top-ups for team members getting promoted

Company values

  • Make it Happen
  • Learn at Speed
  • Bring Good Vibes

Company HQ

London, UK

Leadership

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.


People progressing

Joined Cleo straight from Makers Academy in 2018, and became Technical Lead in 2021.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Cleo

Annie Jackson (Head of Talent )

  • 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
  • Check out our 2022 Diversity and Inclusion report, here: https://web.meetcleo.com/blog/cleo-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-report-2022

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