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.
About Cleo
Most people come to Cleo to do work that matters. Every day, we empower people to build a life beyond their next paycheck, building a beloved AI that enables you to forge your own path toward financial well-being.
Backed by some of the most well-known investors in tech, we’ve reached over 5 million users and plan to double that number each year... which is where you come in.
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 and ways of working and will be leading a talented team of 10 designers. We are also hiring a design manager to report to you and work with you on design career progression, collaboration, and line management.
An example of your short-term focus: Create a vision for design that brings our company and product strategy to life
- 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
- A key goal of the design vision is also to create energy and excitement on where Cleo is headed. You will work closely with the VP of Product to share and articulate the design vision in a way that gives clarity to the company on how users will interact with Cleo in the next 2-3 years.
- 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
- 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 a 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: Meet with our VP Product to discuss your experience in more depth and to learn more about our Product org and meet with our CEO to learn more about Cleo
Stage 3: Task interview with our VP Brand & VP Marketing, 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) with bi-annual reviews.
- 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;
- 25 days annual leave a year + public holidays (+ an additional day for every year you spend at Cleo)
- 2 months paid sabbatical after every 4 years at Cleo
- 6% employer-matched pension in the UK
- Online courses & internal training to level up your skills
- Regular socials and activities, online and in-person
- We'll pay for your Open AI 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.