Machine Learning Engineering Manager - Growth

About the Position

Machine Learning Engineering Manager - Growth

At Cleo, we're on a mission to revolutionize the way people interact with money. We're a fast-growing, profitable fintech unicorn with over $300 million in ARR, and we're looking for a driven individual to join our team. This role is not just a job; it's an opportunity to make a real difference and grow with a company that's scaling rapidly.

Responsibilities

Lead ML Strategy & Delivery

• Own the ML roadmap for Growth, working with the PM and leadership to prioritize high-impact projects.
• Lead the design and delivery of systems that personalize prompts, offers, and messaging to individual users.
• Drive continuous improvement across ML models, from concept to experiment to production.

Build & Mentor Your Team

• Recruit, onboard, and develop 3-5 ML Engineers (mix of IC and growing managers).
• Create a high-performing culture where people want to do their best work.
• Balance mentorship with accountability - push the team to ship quality work quickly.
• Support career growth and technical development; create clear pathways for levelling up.

Collaborate at Scale

• Work closely with Growth Marketing Engineering on infrastructure, experimentation, and deployment.
• Partner with Product on feature prioritization and user experience design.
• Engage Analytics on metrics, instrumentation, and incrementality testing.
• Communicate ML impact clearly to leadership and across the business.

Own Technical Excellence

• Review ML designs and code; ensure quality without becoming a bottleneck.
• Guide architectural decisions on model serving, latency, scalability.
• Maintain (and improve) the team's ML infrastructure and tooling.
• Lead incident response when models or systems degrade in production.

Drive Experimentation & Learning

• Champion a test-driven approach to ML - we measure impact, not just accuracy.
• Ensure robust experiment design, holdout groups, and statistical rigor.
• Build a learning culture where failures are dissected and shared.
• Publish learnings - both internally (to other teams) and externally.

Requirements

Technical Experience

• 5+ years in ML/Data Science roles, with at least 2+ years in a leadership or senior technical IC capacity.
• Hands-on experience shipping ML products end-to-end (not just notebooks) - ideally in personalisation, recommender systems, or growth.
• Strong fundamentals in statistical inference, experimental design, and causal reasoning.
• Production ML experience: model serving, latency optimisation, A/B testing, monitoring.
• Comfortable with Python, SQL, and cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, etc.).
• Experience with typical ML stacks (scikit-learn, XGBoost, TensorFlow/PyTorch, or similar).

Leadership Experience

• Track record of building and scaling high-performing teams.
• Comfortable hiring, onboarding, and developing engineers from L2 to L4+.
• Experience giving technical feedback, code reviews, and architectural guidance.
• Ability to balance autonomy with accountability - you know when to step in and when to empower.
• Comfort navigating ambiguity and making decisions with incomplete information.

Mindset & Values

• You genuinely care about impact - shipping models that drive real business outcomes, not just optimising metrics in isolation.
• You're intellectually curious and humble - you don't have all the answers and you're excited to learn from your team.
• You're a teacher and a learner - you enjoy helping others grow while continuing to develop your own skills.
• You can operate effectively across technical and non-technical contexts - you translate for stakeholders without over-simplifying.
• You have strong communication skills - you can explain complex ML concepts clearly, both to engineers and to non-technical partners.

We Offer

• A competitive compensation package (base + equity) with 3-yearly reviews, aligned to our termly OKR planning cycles.
• The salary bandings for this position are: £150,000 - 170,000 London, Hybrid / £140,000 - 160,000 UK, Remote.
• 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.
• Company-wide performance reviews every 4 months.
• Generous pay increases for high-performing team members.
• Equity top-ups awarded across all levels in performance reviews.
• 25 days annual leave a year + public holidays (+ an additional day for every year you spend at Cleo, up to 30 days).
• 1 month paid sabbatical after 4 years at Cleo.
• 6% employer-matched pension in the UK.
• Private Medical Insurance via Vitality, dental cover, and life assurance.
• Online mental health support via Spill.
• Enhanced parental leave.
• Workplace Nursery Scheme.
• Paid for access to multiple AI platforms (ChatGPT, Codex, Claude).
• Access to the latest AI coding models.
• Pick your kit - choose between a Windows or an Apple computer.
• Regular socials and activities, online and in-person.
• 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.

App access for people in the UK & Europe: If you are an iOS user, please use this link to sign up to our TestFlight version of the app, so you can have a play around with the functionality and features: https://testflight.apple.com/join/fDG9hWng

By submitting this application, I confirm that all the information given by me in this application for employment and any additional documents attached hereto are true to the best of my knowledge and that I have not wilfully suppressed any material fact. I confirm I have disclosed if applicable any previous employment with Cleo AI. I accept that if any of the information given by me in this application is in any way false or incorrect, my application may be rejected, any offer of employment may be withdrawn or my employment with Cleo AI may be terminated summarily or I may be dismissed. By submitting this application, I agree that my personal data will be processed in accordance with Cleo AI's Candidate Privacy Notice

About the Company

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 $300 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.

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