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Louis Grove

Overview

Senior mixed-methods user researcher with 7+ years studying how people make decisions inside complex, evolving systems. First biological, then social, now AI-native. Currently own quant user research for product discovery, pricing and ad-hoc research initiatives at Cleo AI; identifying opportunities, setting the research agenda, scoping methods, running studies, and driving recommendations to product and commercial decision.

I build research and analysis tooling I want to use with safety, evaluation, and observability as core features; an evaluation-and-curation system for an internal library of agentic workflows, a perimeter-deployed Slack helper with human-in-the-loop fallback and full telemetry, instrumentation for AI-augmented research workflows. Working obsession with self-improving research systems and how they can mislead or be abused, intentionally or otherwise.

Selected projects

AI-native research tooling spanning evaluation systems, perimeter-deployed agents with safety/observability built in, and reinforcement learning. See portfolio for Smart Skills Platform, User Research Slack Helper, and the Inscryption RL agent project details.

Work experience

Cleo AI Ltd — London

AI-powered personal finance assistant (~500 person team, $150m+ ARR). Conversational money management, open banking, budgeting and credit-building tools targeting Gen Z users.

Senior User Researcher, August 2025 – Present

  • Built the Smart Skills Platform — an evaluation and curation system for the internal library of agentic workflows. Trace capture across Claude Code and Cursor; cluster-driven gap discovery; curator review gate with explicit promotion / demotion criteria. Two MCPs, project hooks across both clients.
  • Built the User Research Slack Helper — perimeter-deployed Slack app with least-privilege tool access, human-in-the-loop fallback for out-of-scope queries, and full interaction telemetry. Anonymisation before ingest, GDPR-aligned, permission-mirrored access.
  • Led US pricing strategy research using choice-based conjoint and Gabor-Granger. Tiering shifted from $4.99 / $10.99 / $16.99 to $5.99 / $8.99 / $14.99; +15% projected ARR impact.
  • Developed a framework for understanding user behaviour through overlapping constraints (transaction-spend patterns + jobs-to-be-done). Refreshed product discovery pipeline; adopted as shared mental model across product, marketing, data science, and commercial.
  • Owned user and market research for the Series D fundraise. Synthesised AI-tool adoption motivations, triggers, and barriers into the evidence base validating the company's product-development pipeline and AI-usage strategy in investor materials.

Myenergi LTD — London / Remote

Smart renewable energy hardware manufacturer (~400 employees, 500k+ products shipped). Network-connected EV chargers and energy management systems that maximize self-consumption of solar and wind energy.

Group Customer Insight and Experience Lead, April 2024 – August 2025
Group Customer Insight and Experience Manager, November 2023 – April 2024
Customer Insight Analyst (progression to Senior), March 2021 – November 2023

  • Directed domestic and international mixed-methods customer research across UK, EU and AU markets, integrating insight into strategic objectives across UX, product, and growth.
  • Built the customer experience measurement framework adopted across UK, EU and AU markets, anchored on end-to-end journey maps of installer, homeowner, and energy-management user types.

Kantar — London

International market research conglomerate (~30,000 employees across 90+ countries). FMCG consumer panels and shopper behaviour analysis.

Category Analyst, September 2019 – March 2021

  • Managed $300K research budget across ten FMCG clients, delivering tailored insights and presenting quarterly findings to C-suite teams.

IFF Research — London

Researcher, November 2018 – September 2019. CATI government research for the Department for Work and Pensions.

Education

SOAS, University of London — MA, Social Anthropology (2019). Focus: how social systems, cultures and group structures change over time.

University of Exeter — BSc, Evolutionary Biology (2017). Focus: how biological systems adapt and evolve under selection pressure.

Skills

Research methods — Mixed-methods research design · Research strategy ownership · Choice-based conjoint · Gabor-Granger · Van Westendorp · Latent Class Analysis · K-Means clustering · Regression, factor and correspondence analysis · In-depth interviews · Focus groups · Ethnographic research · Usability testing · Jobs-to-be-done · Journey mapping · In-app survey design · Research operations

AI-native research tooling — Claude Code · Cursor · Composer · MCP server development (stdio, Python / TS SDKs) · Prompt engineering · Agent design · Project hooks · RAG pipelines · Embeddings · Slack app development · Evaluation harnesses and trace-driven iteration · Responsible-deployment patterns (least-privilege tool access, human-in-the-loop fallback, observability, staged capability rollout)

Programming and data — Python · R · SQL · PowerBI · Excel · QGIS · Qualtrics

Communication — Strategic recommendations that redirected pricing tiers, refreshed product discovery, and validated AI-usage strategy in Series D investor materials.

References

Available on request.