Senior Engineering Manager - Platform

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.

We have doubled the engineering team in the last year and need more technical leaders to future proof our team! You will be leading our Platform/SRE team and IT team, building the platform for Cleo to succeed as a business.

Key Responsibilities

• Create a strategy for the platform team, including working with key stakeholders across the business in engineering and product, to continually optimise scaling opportunities for Cleo.
• Own the platform and tools that enables and amplifies the rest of engineering including infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, observability tooling and testing platform among others.
• Own the delivery and practices of the platform team and how that impacts the wider engineering team.
• Managing our security and compliance needs from an engineering perspective.
• Management of a group of senior engineers, supporting them in their career growth and performance.

You will be responsible for the technical leadership and understanding the product requirements of the platform at Cleo. Therefore, work closely with your counterparts in product, experience and the wider engineering product teams to ensure that the platform is providing them with the products they need to deliver Cleo.

You will manage the platform/SRE engineers to create a high performing team, this means actively seeking out opportunities to improve or optimise our processes, participating in design sessions, reviewing technical proposals and developing the technical roadmap for your area. 

Must Haves

• 5+ years management experience with previous hands-on software development experience
• Prior experience in platform, security, tooling, infrastructure, devops or SRE space.
• Worked across a product engineering organisation to build a platform that supports their delivery, developing a platform product that enables this
• Knowledge of security best practices and built the documentation to support this
• Passion for and proven ability to coach and mentor people
• Excellent communicator - they need to be comfortable challenging & supporting upwards, downwards and with peers
• Ability to adapt to constantly changing circumstances
• Learning and Growth Mindset - we move quickly and experiment lots and we need them to help people learn and grow from mistakes

Nice to Haves

• Experience working with Compliance and Legal teams (e.g. for security or data)
• Previous experience of successfully advocating for Platform / Infra / DevOps / SRE best practices
• Evidence of leading engineering teams in a high-growth environment
• 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 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 practice 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 (up to £130k base + equity) with regular reviews. You can see our progression framework here.
• Work at one of the fastest-growing tech startups, backed by top VC firms like Sofina, 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 treat you as humans first, employees second. Because we can’t fight for the world’s financial health, if we’re not healthy ourselves. This means all the usual perks but it also means flexibility. We take pride in being a flexible workplace that trusts our Cleople to deliver their best work, giving you the autonomy to structure your day around morning drop-offs to school or daily dog walks.
• Hybrid-first: Join our hybrid-first team, where we blend the best of both remote and in-office work. We expect our team members to be in our London office 1-2 times a week. On Thursdays, we buy you lunch but you can come to the office on whichever days work best for you!
• Other benefits;
  • 25 days annual leave a year + public holidays (+ an additional day for every year you spend at Cleo)
  • Check out our new benefits package here: https://web.meetcleo.com/blog/big-benefits-energy-the-latest-cleo-employee-benefits
  • 6% employer-matched pension in the UK
  • Company-wide performance reviews every 8 months e.g every 2 terms, in line with our termly cycles (Jan-April, May-Aug, Sept-Dec):
    • 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. If you’re an existing user, you’ll still have access to the app. But some features won’t be available. 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.