Senior Principal Engineer, Xero
Product Platform Engineering
Accounting software for small businesses
Posted today
Accounting software for small businesses
1001+ employees
Posted today
1001+ employees
Company mission
To make life better for people in small business, their advisors, and communities around the world.
Role
Who you are
- Proven track record operating at the highest levels of technical authority, shaping long-term strategy, and influencing technical direction across large engineering organizations (1,000+ engineers)
- Deep experience evolving massive, business-critical legacy architectures into modern, decoupled product platforms, unified API layers (e.g., GraphQL/REST), and distributed microservices
- Exceptional ability to align senior stakeholders, C-suite executives, and cross-functional VP leadership around bold architectural bets using clear technical vision, strategic diplomacy, and inspirational storytelling
- Passion for building first-class APIs, shared libraries, and platform capabilities that abstract deep domain complexity for internal engineering customers while upholding strict data integrity standards
- Demonstrated vision in preparing platform architecture for AI-native engineering, automated software delivery, and advanced reliability paradigms at global scale
What the job involves
- The Product Platform Engineering organisation sits at the heart of our tech strategy sits at the heart of Xero, building the shared platforms, APIs and core capabilities that power our customer-facing products. From Accounting Core, Bank Feeds and billing to ecosystem integrations, inventory and US products, the team is modernising critical technology and making it easier for product teams to move quickly, work independently and deliver trusted experiences for small businesses around the world
- We’re at an exciting crossroads where we have a chance to rethink this core system to provide the efficiency and scalability needed by the business going into the next decade. We can leverage the latest in agentic tooling with a strong focus on great APIs to accelerate our ability to change while still preserving the core business logic that makes Xero unique
- As Senior Principal Engineer you will be operating at the highest level of technical leadership within Xero and reporting to the Senior Vice President of Engineering for Product Platforms
- You will shape the long-term technical direction and architecture across the entire organisation, leading large-scale architectural initiatives, navigating industry paradigm shifts such as AI-native engineering at scale, and establishing the principles and frameworks that guide technical decision-making across Xero
- The Product Platforms team serves as the technical backbone for product engineering across Xero. Working alongside senior leaders, domain architects, and cross-functional teams, they focus on establishing unified platform standards and clear architectural pathways. Collaboration is built on high-speed feedback loops, transparent communication, and collective ownership to ensure developer autonomy while maintaining strong guardrails
- Modernizing Core Architecture and decoupling Xero’s tightly bound core accounting monolith, extracting product-specific business logic, and establishing a unified, resilient API and middleware surface layer
- Taking an active, highly complex, mission-critical foundation and systematically reshaping it for higher throughput, extreme reliability, and long-term scalability without risking customer data integrity
- Driving architectural strategy starting with the invoicing workflow vertical slice, before expanding across Bank Feeds, Product Packaging & Subscriptions (PP&S), and core platform data flows
- Establishing the technical foundations, principles, and safety guardrails required to support safe agentic development, autonomous operations, and AI-native engineering workflows across all of Xero
- Defining company-wide engineering practices, architectural standards, and high-speed feedback loops that maximize developer autonomy while maintaining systemic guardrails
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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