Tech Lead Machine Learning Manager - Payments

Cleo; United Kingdom; On-site; GBP 110,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Health insurance

Mental health support

Sabbatical after four years

Learning & development platform

Pension contributions

Location-specific leave

Job summary

Cleo is hiring a Machine Learning Tech Lead in the United Kingdom to own the Payments Intelligence stream. You will lead a small team of around four MLEs and drive production deployments of classifiers and payments recommendation models that impact retention and collections.

Collaboration with product, backend, and analytics will be essential to align ML work with business goals. The role requires strong Python production skills, 5+ years in data science/ML, and proven experience deploying

Qualifications

• At least 5 years of experience in data science, ML engineering, or related roles.
• At least 1 year of management experience, ideally of a small team.
• Able to write production-quality Python code.
• Experience deploying ML models into production.
• Track record in payments, pricing, risk decisioning, or related optimisation problems.
• Strong ability to communicate findings to non-technical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Lead and manage a team of around 4 MLEs.
• Deploy ML models into production—classifiers, payments recommendations, etc.
• Collaborate with product managers, backend engineers, and analysts on planning and sequencing work.
• Work closely with engineers to ensure data collected supports future models.

Skills

ML leadership

Python production

ML deployment

Stakeholder comms

Payments experience

Team management

Tools

Python

Job description

Most money apps talk at you. Cleo talks back

We're not building another finance app. We're building the world's first AI financial assistant, one that actually understands your money and makes you better at it, and we're changing the world's relationship with money in the process. For everyone, whatever their background or balance.

The proof: profitable, fast-growing, a unicorn with over $300M in ARR, and millions of people who now feel differently about their money.

We love original thinkers who challenge the status quo. We move fast, tell the truth, and there's nowhere to hide from good work here. If that excites you more than it scares you, you'll fit right in.

Follow us on LinkedIn for new features and the occasional roast

Meet the team

Here at Cleo, we have ~45 ML engineers. They are the builders behind the AI that powers our product. They design experiments, create models that personalise financial insights, deploy fraud detection systems and scale our conversational AI, making sure that what we build genuinely helps people feel better about their money. From shaping product features and building the models that personalise our users' money journeys, to tackling fraud, scaling our systems and giving leaders the insights they need, our data team is at the heart of it all.

About The Role

We're hiring a Machine Learning Tech Lead to take on technical leadership and ownership of the Payments Intelligence team, managing a team of circa 4 MLEs. This team is responsible for optimising Cleo's payments systems - covering both credit collections and subscription retention - a workstream with a direct impact on the company's financial performance. You'll work closely with your cross-functional squad to understand business issues, then use your ML engineering skills to deploy best-in-class models that move the bottom line.

• Lead and manage a team of 4 MLEs
• Deploy machine learning models into production - classifiers, payments recommendation systems, and any other model that can have impact, typically working with tabular data rather than language models
• Collaborate with product managers, backend engineers, and analysts, playing an active role in planning and sequencing work for the squad
• Work closely with engineers to make sure the right data is collected to build future machine learning models

What We're Looking For

• At least 5 years of experience in data science, ML engineering, or related roles
• At least 1 year of management experience, ideally of a small team
• Ability to write production-quality Python code
• Experience deploying machine learning models into production
• Track record in payments, pricing, risk decisioning, or other business process optimisation problems
• Comfortable with complexity, and developing a holistic understanding of a system in order to propose and build solutions
• A strong ability to communicate findings to non-technical stakeholders in a concise and engaging manner
• Nice to have: experience with credit collections

What we offer

We offer benefits package built to support you in and out of work. Benefits vary by country and include meaningful equity, comprehensive health insurance, mental health support, a paid one-month sabbatical after four years, a learning & development platform, pension or retirement contributions, and location-specific leave entitlements.

For the full breakdown on what's available in your location, visit our Candidate Hub

What Matters

Cleo's mission is to change the world's relationship with money. We can't do that without building a brilliant, genuinely diverse team - and making sure our hiring process gives everyone a fair shot, running a fair and transparent recruitment process in which every candidate is considered on their merits.

We're glad to make reasonable adjustments at any stage of the process. If there's anything we can do to support you in showing us your best, please let your recruiter or one of the team know.

We may use AI-assisted tools during the recruitment process to take support the team in different ways like taking notes or referring back to conversations. They do not replace the team and all applications are reviewed by a Cleo employee thoroughly!