Job description
About Cleo
At Cleo, we’re not just building another fintech app. We’re embarking on a mission to fundamentally change humanity’s relationship with money. Imagine a world where everyone, regardless of background or income, has access to a hyper-intelligent financial advisor in their pocket. That’s the future we’re creating.
Cleo is a rare success story: a profitable, fast-growing unicorn with over $200 million in ARR and growing over 2x year-over-year. This isn’t just a job; it’s a chance to join a team of brilliant, driven individuals who are passionate about making a real difference. We have an exceptionally high bar for talent, seeking individuals who are not only at the top of their field but also embody our culture of collaboration and positive impact.
If you’re driven by complex challenges that push your expertise, the chance to shape something truly transformative, and the potential to share in Cleo’s success as we scale, while growing alongside a company that’s scaling fast, this might be your perfect fit.
Follow us on LinkedIn to keep up to date with new product features and insights from the team.
The Role
Cleo is radically different from the norm and we’re looking for a senior engineering manager to guide and further develop our engineers across our cross functional product squads. You will be responsible for the teams and pillar technical delivery as they create exceptional products for our customers, as well as the wellbeing and development of your reports.
You’ll be responsible for all people management of multiple squads and engineers within a pillar. This means hiring the right spread of TL’s, engineers (juniors, seniors and leads), and then coaching and developing them to deliver on the roadmap. You’ll build out the headcount plan and will be responsible for all hiring and team development within your area to support our growth.
You’ll be accountable for all engineering needs for multiple squads working closely with your counterparts in product, data and experience to build high-performing cross-functional teams so that they deliver impact on our company mission in the most effective way possible. We’ll also be looking to you to develop some of our current squad-focused Leads into more senior positions to support you in the future.
You’ll be responsible for all technical leadership; this means actively seeking out opportunities to improve or optimise processes, participating in design sessions, reviewing technical proposals and developing the technical roadmap for your area.
Want to hear directly from the team? Check out this blog post from a few of our engineering managers.
Our Tech Stack
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.
About you
We’re looking for a Senior Engineering Manager that has exceptional people leadership skills, with an understanding of building a culture of technical excellence. On top of this:
- You are the kind of manager who is people first, technology second. We build environments to support our engineers to be the most impactful engineers possible. We have to strike the right balance between short term gains and longer term sustainability, and our engineering principles reflect this.
- You have previously been a hands-on software developer, but these days get your kicks 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 need to be comfortable challenging and supporting us.
- You are comfortable with change and can adapt to constantly changing 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 lots and we need you to help people learn and grow from their experiences.
What do you get for all your hard work?
- A competitive compensation package with generous equity, and bi-annual reviews, aligned to our quarterly OKR planning cycles. You can view our public progression framework and salary bandings here: https://cleo-ai.progressionapp.com/
- Work at one of the fastest-growing tech startups, backed by top VC firms, Balderton & EQT Ventures
- A clear progression plan. We want you to keep growing. That means trying new things, leading others, challenging the status quo and owning your impact. Always with our complete support.
- Flexibility. We can’t fight for the world’s financial health if we’re not healthy ourselves. We work with everyone to make sure they have the balance they need to do their best work
- Work where you work best. We’re a globally distributed team. If you live in London we have a hybrid approach, we’d love you to spend one day a week or more in our beautiful office. If you’re outside of London, we’ll encourage you to spend a couple of days with us a few times per year. And we’ll cover your travel costs, naturally.
- Other benefits;
- Company-wide performance reviews every 6 months
- Generous pay increases for high-performing team members
- Equity top-ups for team members getting promoted
- 25 days annual leave a year + public holidays (+ an additional day for every year you spend at Cleo, up to 30 days)
- 6% employer-matched pension in the UK
- Private Medical Insurance via Vitality, dental cover, and life assurance
- Enhanced parental leave
- 1 month paid sabbatical after 4 years at Cleo
- Regular socials and activities, online and in-person
- We’ll pay for your OpenAI subscription
- Online mental health support via Spill
- Workplace Nursery Scheme
- And many more!
We strongly encourage applications from people of colour, the LGBTQ+ community, people with disabilities, neurodivergent people, parents, carers, and people from lower socio-economic backgrounds.
If there’s anything we can do to accommodate your specific situation, please let us know.
UK App access: The Cleo app is no longer downloadable in the UK (but only until next year). If you’re an existing user, you’ll still have access to the app. But some features won’t be available (just for a little while). Why? 99% of our users are based
in the US – where financial health is often overlooked. We’ve decided to shift our focus to where we can provide the most value and make the greatest impact for users who need it most. Then we’ll be able to apply what we learn to better support our UK users in the future.
