Principal Backend Engineer, Xero
Payments Platform
$224-302k
More information about location
Accounting software for small businesses
Open for applications
Accounting software for small businesses
1001+ employees
Open for applications
$224-302k
More information about location
1001+ employees
Company mission
To make life better for people in small business, their advisors, and communities around the world.
Role
Who you are
- 12+ years of software engineering experience, including extensive experience designing and operating large-scale distributed systems in production
- Proven track record as a Principal/Architect-level technical leader driving cross-org initiatives and influencing technical direction at scale
- Deep expertise in building scalable, reliable, resilient, and performant systems, with firsthand experience in operational excellence (monitoring, on-call, incident response, observability)
- Strong proficiency in at least one modern backend stack (e.g., C#, Java, Golang, C++) and with cloud-native platforms (AWS strongly preferred)
- Advanced experience with both SQL and NoSQL databases, and designing data models at scale
- Demonstrated ability to define multi-year technical strategy, and translate it into practical phases that deliver incremental business value
- Domain expertise in payments/fintech or other highly regulated, compliance-heavy industries — required
- Strong collaboration and communication skills, able to influence senior leaders, cross-functional stakeholders, and engineers across multiple teams
- Mentorship and leadership at scale: proven ability to elevate engineering capability across teams, mentor Staff and Senior engineers, and set org-wide technical standards
- Hands-on mindset: ability to stay close to the code, dive into technical deep-dives, and guide teams through complex architectural challenges
- Ability to assess existing systems vs. new builds — recognizing when to leverage what exists, when to extend or evolve it, and when to design net-new systems. Skilled in planning pragmatic migrations, swaps, and transitions to minimize disruption while maximizing value
What the job involves
- As a Principal Engineer on the Payments Platform, you’ll shape the technical vision and architecture for how millions of small businesses move money globally
- You will set the direction for building scalable, reliable, resilient, and performant systems, while remaining hands-on to elevate engineering quality across teams
- This is a rare opportunity to combine strategic, multi-year technical leadership with practical, execution-focused impact on a platform central to Xero’s future
- Set Technical Strategy: You'll define and drive the long-term architecture and technical direction for the Payments Platform, balancing strategic vision with incremental delivery
- Elevate Systems: Architect, design, and influence the implementation of highly scalable, reliable, and resilient systems powering global payments
- Balance New vs. Existing: Evaluate existing systems, decide when to reuse vs. rebuild, and design smooth migration paths that deliver value while modernizing the platform
- Remain Hands-On: Contribute to production code, review complex designs, and serve as a trusted expert for debugging and operational excellence
- Cross-Org Impact: Partner with multiple product, security, risk, and platform teams to align strategies, resolve dependencies, and deliver cohesive solutions across Xero
- Operational Excellence: Champion practices around observability, reliability, and performance; raise the bar for how Xero designs, deploys, and operates critical systems
- Mentor & Multiply: Guide Staff and Senior engineers, building technical leadership capacity across the org. Foster a culture of collaboration, innovation, and excellence
- Influence Business & Technology: Work closely with senior product and business leaders to ensure technical decisions align with customer and business outcomes
- Drive Innovation: Bring industry best practices and emerging technologies into Xero, experimenting thoughtfully to push the platform forward
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 HQ
Te Aro, Wellington, Wellington
Leadership
Prior to Xero, she founded Boardlist and Joyus. She also served as the CEO of Polyvore and as a President of Asia Pacific and Latin America Operations at Google.
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