Senior Engineering Manager, Data & AI Products in London

About Pleo

Messy spend management is tricky business. And tedious processes are a lose-lose situation for all involved, not just finance. At Pleo, we're changing that. We build spend solutions that make managing money seamless, empowering, and surprisingly effective for finance teams and employees alike - with a vision to help all businesses ‘go beyond’. The word ‘Pleo’ actually means ‘more than you’d expect’, and living by that mantra has been the secret to our success over the last 10 years.

Now, we’re at a pivotal moment in our journey; every move we make has a direct impact on our 40,000+ customers, our business, and our collective success. We need people who take pride in uncovering customer needs, who turn complex problems into simple solutions, challenge the way things are done (respectfully), and always aim high. With great ambitions driving us forward, we can’t say we’ve got this whole thing figured out. And frankly, that’s half the fun! What we can say is that we’re a driven, progressive, and, importantly, a kind bunch of 850+ people from over 100 nationalities, all committed to delivering the future of business spending, together.

About the role

The Data & AI Products and Data Serving teams are Pleo's two newest teams. Data & AI Products builds customer-facing features using data, AI or ML. Data Serving owns the production-grade data layer that every downstream consumer product teams, AI agents, and external customers depend on for clean, reliable data. This Senior Manager role spans both teams. It is a data and engineering leadership role with a strong product backbone, designed for a builder-leader. You need to understand what good AI feature engineering looks like, what it takes to build end-to-end data products, data engineering best practice, and how to build and lead teams that do both well. You will stay close enough to the work to shape technical direction, unblock delivery, and raise the quality bar across both teams.

Who you’ll be working with and reporting to

You will report to the VP of Data and work closely with our Principal Data Engineer. You will partner closely with the Manager of GenAI Platform, Data Infra & ML Platform, Product Engineering leadership and Product Managers across Pleo.

What you’ll be doing

• Build, lead, and develop multidisciplinary teams as a hands-on builder of systems, standards, and team capability.
• Own the delivery for both teams: AI feature delivery for customers and the API and serving layer that underpins it.
• Partner with product teams to define the AI feature roadmap.
• Drive quality and trust standards across AI feature development by implementing evaluation methodologies, production monitoring processes, responsible AI practices and more.
• Ensure the serving layer meets the reliability and latency requirements of production AI features, product teams, and external customers directly accessing their data.
• Manage resourcing and hiring across both teams through a period of growth.
• Represent both teams in leadership and cross-functional discussions, translating technical progress and blockers into clear decisions needed.
• Partner with the Manager of GenAI Platform to ensure product demand shapes the platform roadmap.

For more context, our tech stack currently includes AWS, Kotlin, Python, Kubernetes. LiteLLM, BrainTrust, Temporal, LLM APIs and more. You do not need to be an expert across all of these, but need enough familiarity to follow technical discussions and make good trade-off decisions.

What you bring

You’ll thrive in this role if you have:

• Proven experience leading cross-functional teams building AI-powered or data-intensive customer-facing products.
• Technical depth in at least one of: AI product engineering, real-time reporting/analytics data APIs, or ML systems - enough to hold credible technical conversations and make good hiring and architecture decisions.
• Experience building or substantially growing teams enabling you to hire, develop, and retain senior technical talent in a competitive market.
• Strong product and business acumen.
• Track record shipping with quality under velocity pressure.
• Comfortable managing across distinct team mandates having different profiles, stakeholders and rhythms.
• Experience scaling teams from the ground up and operating through very ambiguous environments.

Why is this role a good fit for you

This role is a good fit for you if:

• You have experience building and growing highly specialised teams from 0 to 1.
• Your product engineering understanding is as strong as your understanding of the data space.
• You keep up to date with technology changes and still get excited about doing hands-on work.

This role is not a good fit for you if:

• You are a people manager without technical conviction, or you prefer a coordination-only leadership role.
• You want to manage a stable, well-defined function.
• You are not comfortable with the cross-functional complexity of spanning two distinct teams with different engineering profiles and stakeholder groups.

How you’ll develop in this role

In your first 6 months at Pleo, you’ll:

• Develop a clear picture of where both teams are, the gaps in capability and structure, and the most important priorities to unblock first.
• Progress hiring across both teams and set team up for success.
• Partner with Product, Principal Data Engineer and technical leads to establish a clear delivery rhythm, quality bar, and roadmap for each team.
• Ship the AI features through Data & AI Products and establish an evaluation and monitoring baseline.

We’re committed to helping you develop your career, whether that means taking on bigger projects, stepping into leadership, or acquiring new skills.

The location

Please note: We can hire on a remote, hybrid or in-person set-up in any of the locations listed on the advert but you will need to be physically based in the country of your choice with a valid right to work. We are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role in any of the listed locations.

The interview process

We want to ensure you are set-up for success and understand what will be expected of you. If your application is successful, our interview process is as follows:

• Intro call: A 30-minute chat with our Talent Partner to discuss the role and your background.
• Hiring Manager interview: A 60-minute conversation with our VP of Data, deep diving into your management experience, data & AI literacy, and product acumen.
• Technical interview: A 75 to 90-minute practical interview where we'll assess your knowledge of AI and product engineering on a real-life like scenario.
• Final interview: A 30-minute conversation with our Chief Product & Technology Officer to discuss strategic vision, values and business acumen.

Transparency is important to us so we also wanted to share some insights about what we’re looking for in applications to ensure you can set yourself up for success!

We tend to receive really high volumes of applications for AI-related roles but less than 1% tend to be selected for an intro call. Some of the key reasons why previous candidates didn’t make it past the application screening stage include:

• CV writing and content: we receive a lot of CVs, and many of them are AI-generated.
• Application care: every single application we receive is reviewed by a human.
• Profile to role fit: we are looking for extensive experience of building AI/data related products and concurrently managing multiple teams.

About your application

English first. Since it's our company language, please submit your application in English. You’ll be using it a lot if you join us.

A fair look for everyone. Our talent team reads every single application to ensure the process is fair.

Diversity drives us. We can only reach our goals if our team reflects the world around us.

Interview at your best. We want you to feel comfortable throughout the process.

Your data is safe. When you apply, we process your personal data as a data processor.

Applying for multiple roles? Nothing is stopping you, and we assess every role independently.

Reapplying. If you’re applying for the same role again, please wait six months from your last decision before hitting submit.