Lead Product Designer - Design System

Cleo; London; Hybrid; GBP 40,000 - 80,000

Job description

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 $200 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.

Please note that, at this time, we are unable to offer visa sponsorship for the Lead Product Designer role. Only candidates who do not require visa sponsorship should apply

On the frontier of design

We're moving through uncharted territory with brand new design challenges around conversation, UI, brand, TOV and applied machine learning AI that don’t have much precedent yet. We’re using all that to help people improve their financial health, solving money problems that make a very real and tangible difference to our users.

About the Role

This is a unique opportunity to shape Cleo’s next chapter, leading initiatives that enhance both the pace and quality of our work.

Cleo is a conversation-first financial assistant, empowering people to build a stronger relationship with their money. We are launching Cleonardo, our first-ever tokenized design system, alongside a refreshed brand identity and new three-tab Information Architecture (IA). This evolution reflects the maturity and quality we believe our users deserve in their financial journey.

As Cleo’s Design Systems Lead, you’ll be part of a newly-formed, design-led, cross-functional squad dedicated to evolving, implementing, and scaling Cleo’s design system, Cleonardo.

With a focus on Quality as a company-wide OKR, your work will have a direct and high-impact role in shaping the user experience across the Cleo platform.

Key Responsibilities:

• Define and evolve visual language: Work with Principal designers to lead the development of Cleonardo’s visual language —including typography, colour, iconography, and componentry—ensuring consistency with Cleo’s rebrand and scalability across products.
• Tokenize and standardise brand elements: Integrate new brand elements into Cleonardo to create a cohesive and accessible design system that reflects our refreshed look and feel across all Cleo products.
• Holistic problem-solving: Apply strategic thinking and a big-picture perspective to evolve the design system, identifying and addressing challenges that span across teams and user experiences. Balance innovation with practicality to implement solutions that enhance the product’s usability and cohesiveness.
• Conduct UI audits and ensure quality: Regularly audit Cleo’s UI and design system to identify and resolve inconsistencies, continuously improving Cleonardo’s alignment with brand standards and design quality.
• Maintain and scale Design System Libraries: Manage Cleonardo’s Figma libraries for desktop and mobile, ensuring they are accessible, scalable, and integrated into team workflows.
• Drive Cross-functional adoption: Partner with product and engineering teams to embed Cleonardo across Cleo, establishing a contribution model that enables efficient collaboration and system coherence.
• Champion Accessibility and Inclusivity: Embed accessibility and inclusion standards within Cleonardo, ensuring that all elements meet and exceed accessibility requirements.
• Communicate and advocate for Cleonardo: Act as an ambassador for the design system, providing regular updates to stakeholders and educating teams on new patterns and components.
• Inspire innovation and elevate design standards: Bring fresh, forward-thinking ideas to the table, exploring new approaches to design systems that can elevate Cleo’s user experience and set new standards for quality and accessibility.
• Cross-Functional collaboration: Work closely with product, engineering, brand, and content teams to align Cleonardo with broader company goals, ensuring that the design system meets diverse needs and drives consistency across departments. Build relationships with key stakeholders, hold retrospectives, and gather input to promote team alignment, growth, and continuous improvement.

What We’re Looking For:

• Proven experience with Design Systems: Your portfolio highlights multiple design systems you’ve created or largely contributed to, showcasing a strong understanding of scalable design. Ideally, you have approx 6+ years in Product Design with 2+ years at least specialising in design systems.
• Cross-Platform expertise: You have experience designing for both mobile app and desktop environments, ensuring seamless usability across devices.
• Deep design knowledge: Skilled in creating modular, accessible, and user-centred designs that scale to millions of users.
• Collaborative and adaptable: Comfortable working within diverse, fast-paced teams, you have a track record of effective collaboration in a rapid-growth environment.
• Impact-driven: You’re motivated by seeing tangible impact, excited by the idea that work done on a Monday could be live by Friday, driving results.
• Technically proficient: Experienced in partnering closely with engineers, you understand the technical considerations of design system implementation.
• Experimentation and analysis mindset: You value experimentation, data, and analysis, using these insights to inform and iterate on design decisions.

How long will the process take?

We aim to move as fast as possible. Usually 2-3 weeks is usually enough time for us all to get to know each other.

• Step 1: An initial call with our Talent Team to learn more about your experience and why you want to work at Cleo
• Step 2: A craft interview with a Lead Designer to walk through some of your mobile app work and impact
• Step 3: A case study interview to present an example of design systems work with two of our design systems team
• Step 4: A final Values interview with cross-functional peers from either product, engineering, content or data

What do you get for all your hard work?

• A competitive compensation package (base + equity) with bi-annual reviews, aligned to our quarterly OKR planning cycles. This role is PD4 level. You can view our public progression framework and salary bandings here: https://cleo-ai.progressionapp.com/
• 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.
• Other benefits;
• Company-wide performance reviews every 6 months
• Generous pay increases for high-performing team members
• Equity top-ups for team members getting promoted
• 25 days annual leave a year + public holidays (+ an additional day for every year you spend at Cleo, up to 30 days)
• 6% employer-matched pension in the UK
• 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
• Workplace Nursery Scheme
• 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.

If there’s anything we can do to accommodate your specific situation, please let us know.

UK App access: The Cleo app is no longer downloadable in the UK (but only until next year). If you’re an existing user, you’ll still have access to the app. But some features won’t be available (just for a little while). 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.

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We are looking for product designers with previous experience of working on multiple Design Systems that either focus on or include mobile apps. Can you briefly summarise your experience of leading high impact Design Systems work - either launching or relaunching a new Design System, or significantly expanding an existing one? *

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