Senior Rewards Specialist

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 $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.

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About the role: 

We’re looking for a Senior Reward Specialist to join our People team and lead the technical design, execution, and evolution of Cleo’s compensation frameworks.

You’ll be the subject matter expert on salary banding, benchmarking, equity modelling, and compensation analytics, playing a central role in how we scale our reward architecture across functions, levels, and geographies. This is a high-impact individual contributor role, reporting directly to the Chief People Officer, and working cross-functionally with Finance, Talent, and SLT.

Key Responsibilities:

• Own and evolve Cleo’s global compensation architecture, including our level-based banding framework (L1–L7).
• Ensure bands are correctly calibrated to Pave data benchmarks, spanning UK Hybrid, UK Remote, and US geographies.
• Apply a consistent approach to bands, widening spreads at senior levels, and calibration against internal job levels.
• Lead annual benchmarking reviews and proactively recommend changes based on data trends, market shifts, or business needs.
• Build and maintain compensation models for budgeting, scenario planning, and business case support (e.g. pay progression, top-up planning, and equity refresh cycles)
• Analyse compa-ratios, band penetration, and pay distribution across teams to identify risks and opportunities.
• Work closely with FP&A on compensation forecasting and reward cost planning.
• Partner with People Ops to run seamless salary and equity review cycles, including logic setup, systems testing, and calibration readiness.
• Ensure data quality and logic integrity across Pave, Lattice, and HRIS systems.
  Support executive compensation and LTIP modelling for senior hires and high-impact roles.
• Act as a trusted advisor to Talent Partners and Hiring Managers on offer benchmarking, comp placement, and equity mechanics.
  Provide training and toolkits to upskill stakeholders in Cleo’s comp philosophy, banding structure, and reward practices.
• Contribute to strategic reward projects (e.g. geo-differentiated pay, incentive design, option pool management).

About you:

• 5+ years in compensation or total rewards roles, ideally within tech or high-growth environments
• Deep experience with market benchmarking (Pave preferred), job levelling, and band design
• Advanced spreadsheet and modelling skills (Google Sheets / Excel), including financial modelling and data visualization
• Strong grasp of equity compensation (options, RSUs, vesting, dilution, refresh)
• Experience running or supporting salary and equity review cycles
• High attention to data quality, structure, and integrity — you think in systems and edge cases

Nice to haves

• Familiarity with HRIS and performance systems
• Exposure to UK gender pay gap reporting or US comp disclosures
• Experience advising on compensation during scaling (e.g. building roles, adjusting for new markets, defining performance multipliers)
• STEM degree or similar

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. You can view our public progression framework and salary bandings here: https://cleo-ai.progressionapp.com/ Depending on experience we can pay up to £113k p.a.
• You’ll work directly with the CPO and influence reward design at the highest level
• You’ll own the architecture of a comp model used across a business scaling rapidly across two markets
• You’ll play a critical role in how we balance fairness, competitiveness and performance in our reward philosophy
• 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.