Senior Backend Engineer, Xero
Payments Platform
$179.5-219.4k
+ Employee Share Plan
Cloud-based accounting software
Be an early applicant
Cloud-based accounting software
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$179.5-219.4k
+ Employee Share Plan
1001+ employees
Company mission
To make life better for people in small business, their advisors, and communities around the world.
Role
Who you are
- 6+ years of software engineering experience, with a proven track record delivering highly available, distributed backend systems at scale
- Strong expertise in system design, API development, and building reliable, high-throughput services—balancing trade-offs between new and existing systems
- Proficiency in at least one modern backend stack (e.g. C# a bonus, Java, Golang, C++) and experience with cloud-native platforms (AWS a bonus)
- Experience with both SQL and NoSQL databases
- Ability to drive technical design and lead implementation of complex projects end-to-end
- Experience mentoring junior engineers and helping raise the technical bar within a team
- Familiarity with payments, fintech, or other highly regulated, compliance-heavy domains (preferred but not required)
- Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to work effectively in an agile, collaborative environment
- Commitment to code quality—experience with code reviews, testing practices, and building maintainable systems
What the job involves
- Xero reimagined accounting software. Now, we’re reimagining the flow of money itself. We’re making a critical, multi-year investment in our new Payments Platform organization—the engine that will power payments across all of Xero’s ecosystem
- As a Senior Backend Engineer on the Payments Platform, you’ll play a key role in building scalable systems that redefine how millions of small businesses move money
- This is a rare chance to join at an early stage, contribute directly to foundational systems, and have a meaningful, visible impact on Xero’s future
- Design and build core services: Contribute to the development of reliable, scalable, performant, and secure services that power Xero’s Payments Platform
- Drive technical design: Lead the design and implementation of complex features and projects, ensuring solutions are robust and extensible
- Stay hands-on: Write production-quality code, build proof-of-concepts, and participate in design and code reviews
- Solve challenging problems: Work on distributed systems, global payment integrations, compliance, and risk-related challenges
- Collaborate across teams: Work closely with Product, Security, Risk, and Operations to translate business needs into technical solutions
- Mentor teammates: Support the growth of junior engineers by sharing knowledge, providing feedback, and modeling best practices
- Champion operational excellence: Contribute to on-call practices, observability, and monitoring to ensure high system reliability
- Continuously improve: Stay up-to-date on industry trends, adopt new technologies where appropriate, and improve team processes and practices
- Massive Impact: Build a global payments platform that is central to Xero’s revenue and customer growth
- Hard Problems, High Scale: Tackle complex fintech challenges like orchestration, compliance, fraud, and global rails
- Early Stage, Real Ownership: Contribute to foundational systems that future products and revenue streams will rely on
- Culture & Growth: Join a team that values excellence, collaboration, and innovation—while supporting your growth to do the best work of your career
Our take
For a long time, high-quality financial services have been reserved for large-scale businesses. Xero solves this problem by giving small businesses, accountants, and bookkeepers access to best-in-class finance and accounting solutions.
Xero is one of the largest companies of its kind, with its promise to save time and effort for small business owners - who often don’t have in-house accounting teams - capturing interest and allowing the company to scale. It has a strong rival in Intuit QuickBooks, which offers similar services, but competes by being most effective for growing startups, and having an incredibly simple user experience.
A series of acquisitions and partnerships, including the purchase of Instafile in 2018, have consolidated Xero’s market share. The company continues to add new integrations, such as with Vehocheck Workshop Manager, and the 2023 launched Beautiful Business Fund that will help small businesses accelerate growth.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
3% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Company benefits
- Top-spec MacBook or HP Z-book
- Employee Share Plan (own a part of Xero!)
- 23 days holiday plus Bank Holidays (plus an extra 3 days over the Christmas period!)
- 10 days Wellbeing Leave (for sickness, emergencies and taking a mental health break)
- Company Pension Scheme (matched contributions up to 4.5%)
- A range of wellbeing initiatives
- Remote and Flexible Working
Company HQ
Te Aro, Wellington, Wellington
Leadership
Rod Drury
(Founder)Previously Consultant at EY, Founder of Glazier System. Was CEO of AfterMail and Director at TradeMe. Also founded Pacific Fibre and was Director at NZX.
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