What Really Happens at a Cleo Frontend Chapter Day?

1. Intro: Chapters in Action

Our Frontend Chapter meets every two weeks to share challenges, align on standards, and push our craft forward. But once a term, we bring it all together in person for our ✨ Frontend Chapter Day ✨.

Chapter Day is when Cleo’s frontend engineers step away from tickets and Zoom to reconnect as a community—sharing ideas, solving problems, and yes, eating a lot of pizza. This post gives you a look inside the day: from the technical deep-dives to the cultural glue that holds it all together.

2. Chapter Day, Hour by Hour

Icebreakers & Settling In ☕

• Emoji Me This: Tara kicked things off with a creative emoji icebreaker—yes, it got weird, and yes, we loved it.

Talks from the Frontend Floor - Morning Highlights 📢

Joe welcomed us and teed up a fantastic morning of lightning talks from engineers across the chapter.

• “I MESSED UP”: A crowd favourite. Nacho, Sara, Kasia, and Mick bravely shared their most instructive mistakes. It was a powerful reminder that learning from failure is part of Cleo’s engineering DNA.

• Sara showcased how we’re now able to implement OTA (”Over The Air”) updates to our app, meaning no app store review or update needed, therefore allowing us to send hot fixes to a user in 25 min.

• Kasia shared a behind-the-scenes of the work behind our new brand identity. (Key stat: 10 people cried.)

• Ange showcased how we’re working with a 3rd Party Fraud Vendor, to detect Fraud in our app, and the challenges the Fraud team have experienced working with a private 3rd party SDK.

• Mick’s Chat 3.0 talk showed where we’re heading with smarter in-app conversation architecture

Lunch with Backend Buds 🍜

Next up: lunch from Karma Cans! I wish I could say we got special treatment here, but in reality this happens in the office every week. On Wednesdays, office goers can pick from 3 or 4 different options to order to the office, and it’s always delicious.

Lunch is also a good opportunity to mingle with our Backend Engineers, who run their own Backend Chapter Day downstairs on the same day!

Afternoon: More Talks & Hands-on Workshops 👩🏻‍💻

• Frontend hiring - The talent team’s Olivia shared insights into how we’re shaping our frontend hiring funnel, and how all the frontenders will be getting involved (Yes, we’re hiring! Check out our open roles here.)

• Felix talked through the challenges and success of our new Debt Dashboard (The Great Debt Reset) - designed to help users manage and pay down debt more effectively

• Simon (Our QA Engineer) demonstrated how he’s automated the process of mapping all 200+ in-app prompts - greatly speeding up what would’ve been a cumbersome and unsustainable manual task and opening up new possibilities for testing

• Pedro & Graham showed how we’re embedding incident.io into our engineering workflow - complete with Slack tutorials that simulate real incidents

• Then we had a workshop from our wonderful AX-ers Mariama & Hawkar - a crash course in approaching analytics like an analyst (hint - don’t use SELECT *)

Past workshops have covered E2E testing, migrating from Redux to React Query—real, practical tools that level us all up.

Pizza & Wrap-Up 🍕

Anthony closed the day with a Wikipedia race from “Pancakes” to “React Native” (chaotic and educational).

Then we descended to the kitchen for pizza, drinks, and further debates about the finer points of OTA deployments.

3. Beyond the Day: Remote Inclusion, Culture, & Community

Chapter Day is more than just a London office event—it’s built for everyone.

• Remote engineers are flown in, put up in hotels, and fully included in every session.

• The Women & Non-Binary Engineers Breakfast the morning after has become a tradition—a safe, supportive space to connect.

• And in true Cleo fashion, there’s usually always a party the day after. This time it was for our Rebrand launch. And Last time, it was the Christmas party!

4. What Makes Chapter Day Special?

At Cleo, Chapter Day is more than an event—it’s an embodiment of our engineering culture.

• It keeps us aligned on the why, not just the what

• It gives us space to think bigger, reflect deeper, and build better

• It’s a key moment for onboarding new engineers into the chapter

• It blends technical depth with joyful connection

• And yes, it means you can request your favourite snacks 🧃 (Although the canned cocktails I requested were notably absent)

5. Why This Matters for Engineers Considering Cleo

If you're thinking about joining Cleo as a frontend engineer, here’s what Chapter Day tells you about life here:

• We invest in engineering as a craft 🔧

  Chapter Day is planned by engineers, for engineers. It’s a space to sharpen skills, align on standards, and drive the future of the app.

• We’re hybrid-first and remote-inclusive 🌍

  Whether you’re based in London or logging in from Lisbon, you’re fully part of the team.

• We balance ambition with fun 🎪

  We work hard, share openly, and make space to connect as people—not just coders.

P.S. – We’re hiring!

Frontend and Backend roles are open now → check them out!