Lead Product Designer - Design System

At Cleo, we are 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. Cleo is a profitable, fast-growing unicorn with over $200 million in ARR and growing over 2x year-over-year. This is a chance to join a team of brilliant, driven individuals who are passionate about making a real difference.

We are 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.
• 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.

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.
• 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 enough time for us all to get to know each other.

What do you get for all your hard work?

• A competitive compensation package (base + equity) with bi-annual reviews.
• Work at one of the fastest-growing tech startups, backed by top VC firms.
• A clear progression plan.
• Flexibility in work arrangements.
• Other benefits including performance reviews, generous pay increases, annual leave, pension contributions, private medical insurance, enhanced parental leave, and 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.