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.

The role:

As a chat-first product, we're moving through uncharted territory. Everyday there are new challenges around chat user experience, brand, tone of voice and applied machine learning that you can't just look up the answer to.

You’ll be responsible for our design direction, quality of the product design execution and developing the design team and ways of working. You'll be leading a multi disciplinary team of product designers, brand designers, user researchers and UX writers - roughly a team of 25-30 people. You'll be supported by leads in the brand design, ux writing and user research teams and our product design manager on day to day people & performance management.

An example of some of your responsibilities in this role:

• As Cleo leans more heavily into chat-based financial coaching, you will be responsible for creating a design vision that shows how we can coach our users to improve their financial health, and how this relates to our other product offerings
• You will engage key members of user experience, product, marketing and engineering in the creation of this design vision, getting feedback and aligning with the company and product strategy and then use this to improve the design of our product overall
• Work with design, product and engineering to determine the key changes that need to be made in our existing product flows in order to realise the design vision and align with squads on getting this baseline in place
• Collaborate with Brand and Marketing to make sure all designs are consistent across every user touchpoint and that our design work is always world-class quality
• Establish and maintain design systems, processes, and best practices that enable efficient and scalable design operations across the organisation
• Drive a user-centric design approach, advocating for the user's needs and ensuring that product and marketing designs are accessible, inclusive, and engaging for a diverse audience

You should apply if you:

• Have significant experience and expertise in product design, you’ve worked for highly-regarded B2C Product-led companies or agencies with experience heading up a Design function
• Have experience setting a design vision that aligns with company and product strategy, and visualising how a product’s competitive advantage and uniqueness can be achieved
• Are happy working in a startup environment at pace. You have a “done vs. perfect” mindset to get improvements out the door and then improve them iteratively rather than taking a long time over something 100% perfect.
• Are a great people leader: On the team and across Cleo, you’ll foster a culture of collaboration and innovation
• Care deeply about understanding other humans and their relationships with money. You’re passionate about our goal of radically improving our users' relationship with money.
• Are commercially-minded: You understand our product’s competitive landscape and know how user value affects business value, taking this into account in your design decisions and prioritisation
• Have great leadership and communication skills - you can get the company excited about your design vision and articulate how it links to the company and product strategy. You can represent design at the leadership level and contribute meaningfully to strategic decisions.

Logistics: hiring process

Typically our interview processes take between 2-3 weeks, depending on availability of the team and your availability. Here's a rough idea of what to expect with our recruitment process:

• Stage 1: Chat with our Head of Talent about your experience to see if the role is a good match
• Stage 2:
  • Part i) Meet with our CEO, Barney to learn more about Cleo
  • Part ii) Meet our Product leadership team to discuss your experience in more depth and to learn more about our Product org
• Stage 3: Task interview with our CEO, you'll also meet with our VP People to talk about your people management experience
• Final Stage: Meet our VP Tech & our Lead User Researcher, and Lead UX Writer, we'd also love for you to meet more of the design team

What do you get for all your hard work?

• A competitive compensation package (base + equity)
• 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 for 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;
  • Check out our new benefits package here: https://web.meetcleo.com/blog/big-benefits-energy-the-latest-cleo-employee-benefits
  • 25 days annual leave a year + public holidays (+ an additional day for every year you spend at Cleo)
  • 6% employer-matched pension
  • Performance reviews every 8 months,
    • Generous pay increases for high performers and high-growth team members
    • Equity top ups for team members getting promoted
  • 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
  • And many more!

UK App access: The Cleo app is no longer downloadable in the UK. 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.