At a Glance
- Tasks: Join a dynamic team to build impactful fintech solutions that improve financial health.
- Company: Cleo, a fast-growing fintech unicorn on a mission to change money management.
- Benefits: Competitive salary, equity options, flexible work, and generous leave policies.
- Other info: Inclusive culture with strong support for personal and professional growth.
- Why this job: Make a real difference in people's lives while working with cutting-edge technology.
- Qualifications: Experience in any modern tech stack; curiosity and problem-solving skills are key.
The predicted salary is between 60000 - 80000 £ per year.
About Cleo
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 $300 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.
About the role
At Cleo, we care far more about how you think than which language you’ve used before. While much of our product runs on Ruby today, we’re deliberately hiring polyglot engineers because diverse technical backgrounds make our teams stronger — different languages shape how you solve problems, reason about systems, and design clean software. If you’ve shipped meaningful product work in any modern stack, you’ll ramp quickly here. What matters most is curiosity, thoughtful engineering, and a willingness to learn, not a perfect match on our tech.
What you'll be doing
You’ll join a cross-functional product squad and work closely with engineers, designers, analysts, and product partners to build features that improve our users’ financial health. You’ll shape the direction of upcoming work, break down problems with your team, and help drive projects from early discovery all the way to shipped impact. Day‑to‑day, you’ll work across our backend and product systems – much of which runs in Ruby today – but you don’t need Ruby experience to thrive here. We value engineers who think clearly, understand trade‑offs, and can apply strong fundamentals to any language or framework. You’ll build and evolve APIs, data models, and business logic; contribute to testing, observability, and experimentation; and help us continuously improve developer experience and product quality. Along the way, you’ll mentor others at your level (mid, senior, or beyond), share knowledge generously, and contribute to a team culture where engineers grow quickly and have real influence.
A few examples of the work our engineers shipped recently:
- Building a secured credit card
- Launching new budgeting and financial insight features
- Running subscription and pricing experiments
About you
You care about building products that genuinely help people, and improving financial health is a mission that resonates with you. You’re an engineer with solid fundamentals who has worked in any modern tech stack – the exact language isn’t important. What matters is your ability to reason clearly, learn quickly, think in trade‑offs, and write maintainable, thoughtful code. You collaborate well with product, design, and data; you’re curious about users; and you enjoy shaping work beyond just the technical bits. Whether you’re mid‑level, senior, or leading teams already, you contribute positively to engineering culture, support others, and help raise the bar for those around you. You align with our values and engineering principles – rooted in autonomy, accountability, pragmatism, and building things that genuinely improve people’s lives.
Our tech stack
Cleo is built as a Ruby on Rails monolith with a single React Native app frontend, utilising TypeScript. We also leverage Python for machine learning services and PostgreSQL for our database, all hosted on AWS. Our CI/CD pipeline is fully automated, with production deployments happening on every merge via Kubernetes. Our backend engineers deploy multiple times a week, and we release our frontend app to Google and Apple for review at least once a week. While we take a pragmatic approach, we place a strong emphasis on quality. Our code is peer‑reviewed, and we maintain automated testing using Minitest and CircleCI. We're also actively working towards a more modular architecture, focusing on separating concerns to achieve all the benefits of microservices within a monolith, while progressively refactoring our code as we build new features. Everyone in the engineering team contributes to driving our technical strategy, voices & ideas from all levels are valued: we are all owners at Cleo.
What do you get for all of your hard work?
- A competitive compensation package (base + equity) with three annual reviews, aligned to our termly OKR planning cycles.
- 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.
Senior Polyglot Engineer – Build Impactful Fintech employer: Wayfindi
Contact Detail:
Wayfindi Recruiting Team
StudySmarter Expert Advice 🤫
We think this is how you could land Senior Polyglot Engineer – Build Impactful Fintech
✨Tip Number 1
Network like a pro! Reach out to people in your field on LinkedIn, especially those at Cleo. A friendly message can go a long way in getting your foot in the door.
✨Tip Number 2
Prepare for the interview by understanding Cleo's mission and values. Show how your skills align with their goal of improving financial health – it’s all about making a real impact!
✨Tip Number 3
Practice your problem-solving skills! Be ready to tackle technical challenges during interviews. Remember, they care more about how you think than the specific languages you've used.
✨Tip Number 4
Don’t forget to apply through our website! It’s the best way to ensure your application gets seen by the right people. Plus, it shows you’re genuinely interested in joining the team.
We think you need these skills to ace Senior Polyglot Engineer – Build Impactful Fintech
Some tips for your application 🫡
Show Your Passion: When you write your application, let your enthusiasm for fintech and improving financial health shine through. We want to see that you genuinely care about making a difference in people's lives!
Highlight Your Unique Skills: Don’t just list your technical skills; explain how your diverse background makes you a better problem solver. We value polyglot engineers, so share how your experience in different languages has shaped your approach to engineering.
Be Clear and Concise: Keep your application straightforward and to the point. We appreciate clarity, so make sure your thoughts are well-organised and easy to follow. This reflects your ability to communicate effectively with the team.
Apply Through Our Website: We encourage you to apply directly through our website. It’s the best way for us to receive your application and ensures you’re considered for this exciting opportunity at Cleo!
How to prepare for a job interview at Wayfindi
✨Understand the Mission
Before your interview, take some time to really understand Cleo's mission to change humanity's relationship with money. Think about how your skills and experiences can contribute to this goal. Be ready to discuss how you can help build impactful fintech solutions that genuinely improve people's financial health.
✨Showcase Your Polyglot Skills
Cleo values diverse technical backgrounds, so be prepared to talk about your experience with different programming languages and frameworks. Highlight specific projects where you’ve used various technologies to solve complex problems. This will demonstrate your adaptability and problem-solving skills, which are crucial for a polyglot engineer.
✨Emphasise Collaboration
Since you'll be working in cross-functional teams, it's important to showcase your collaborative spirit. Share examples of how you've worked with engineers, designers, and product partners in the past. Discuss how you approach teamwork and how you can contribute positively to Cleo's engineering culture.
✨Prepare Thoughtful Questions
Interviews are a two-way street, so come prepared with insightful questions about Cleo's tech stack, team dynamics, and future projects. This shows your genuine interest in the role and helps you assess if Cleo is the right fit for you. Ask about their approach to continuous improvement and how they support engineers in their growth.