Staff Engineer

Here at Cleo, we have ~200 Engineers organised into Pillars. ✨ Our stack spans a Ruby on Rails monolith, a single React Native (TypeScript) app frontend, Python for machine learning services, and PostgreSQL, all hosted on AWS and shipped through Kubernetes - backend goes out multiple times a week, app releases to Google and Apple at least weekly. To thrive here, our engineers proactively use our Engineering Principles to guide daily decisions, take ownership of problems beyond their own squad to drive broader impact, and actively drive their own learning, development, and growth.

We're hiring a Staff Backend Engineer for our Financial Assistant Pillar. You'll shape technical direction and drive delivery across multiple functional product squads.

Key responsibilities for this role include:

Partnering with senior peers to define architecture and lead complex, high-impact initiatives

Bringing teams together to ship ambitious product work that improves users’ financial health

Building shared systems, patterns, and tooling that raise the bar across engineering

Staying hands-on in our Ruby on Rails monolith -- designing APIs, data models, and scalable services

Anticipating risks and opportunities early, influencing plans and technical strategy

Mentoring engineers and TLs, growing the next generation of technical leaders

You’re excited by the opportunity to own and influence technical direction at a pillar level

You’ve operated at senior/staff level across multiple teams or complex domains

You bring strong technical judgment and think in long-term, scalable solutions

You’re comfortable leading without authority and aligning teams around a shared direction

You have a track record of building systems and practices used beyond your immediate team

You enjoy mentoring and raising the bar for others

You have strong, hands-on experience with Ruby on Rails ( essential )

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!