Be an Early Applicant
Xero’s online accounting software connects small business owners with their numbers, their bank, and advisors anytime.
The Role
The Principal Engineer at Xero leads multi-team engineering strategies, influences technical direction, fosters team culture, and collaborates closely with stakeholders.
Summary Generated by Built In
Our Purpose
At Xero, we’re here to help you supercharge your business. We do this by automating routine tasks, surfacing actionable insights and connecting businesses with the right data, advisors and apps. When that happens, we’re not only making life better for small business, we’ll be building a stronger economy that can change the world.
How you’ll make an impact
Own and deliver org/company-wide multi-year, multi-team goals with technical expertise of In-depth understanding of specific technologies and engineering principles relevant(e.g., software, hardware, systems).
Design and evaluate system architectures, ensuring scalability, reliability, and performance utilising your high-level programming skills in relevant languages, with a focus on best practices and design patterns.
This specific position will unlock and enable Platform Enablement teams to scale for 10x growth while uplifting tech stack through transition states that will drive business value.
At Xero, a Principal Engineer plays a crucial role in shaping and steering the architecture and engineering direction, fostering a sense of community, and developing the capabilities of engineering teams:
- Influencing the technical strategy of a group, often partnering closely with Heads of Engineering and/or senior product and engineering leadership to ensure the health of product development as a whole and influences the overall direction of product development.
- Collaboration with product managers, designers, and other stakeholders to align technical solutions with business needs. Principal Engineer helps break down silos within and across functions and influences others to reach the best outcome for Xero. They build deep cross-functional relationships, facilitate the right conversations, and settle disagreements by managing different viewpoints.
- Principal Engineer lifts team performance through goal clarity, feedback, removal of barriers, coaching and establishing a psychologically safe inclusive team culture. They model a standard of excellence that supports a culture of high performance on their team. They drive engineering-wide processes and define the bar for quality and best practices. They devote time to spreading knowledge widely via talks, blog posts or written documentation.
- Proven experience in software engineering with a focus on system architecture and design.
- Champion a culture of experimentation, encouraging the team to test new ideas and technologies through prototypes and proof-of-concept projects.
What you’ll do:
- We make it beautiful: Support, develop and deliver by actively measuring, monitoring, and continuously improving the performance and reliability of applications you are responsible for.
- We make it happen: Delivery Management / Planning and Execution - Expertise in planning, executing, and monitoring projects, often using Agile or other methodologies to ensure timely delivery.
- We make it human - Proactive in exploring new technologies and methodologies to improve processes and product offerings. Collaborate and coach your team to align to Xero Engineering Standards eg: compliance and security requirements in the Path to Production Standard, front-end development requirements in the Web Application Standard.
- We make it together: Strong ability to communicate technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders and advocate for the engineering team's needs. This includes Cross-Functional Collaboration in working with product management, design, and other departments to ensure cohesive project alignment.
About you :
- Demonstrate knowledge, skills and expertise leading data platform engineering teams, driving project goals, and maintaining high standards of quality with a deep understanding of the relevant technologies (AWS, GCP), CDC patterns, tools, and processes in their domain (e.g., software development, systems engineering).
- Share expertise and experience to connect and support the growth of a culture of continuous empathy towards our customers among your team with the ability to make architectural decisions and understand complex systems to guide teams effectively.
- Attributes and motivations to grow the talent in the team by identifying skill gaps and ensuring there is a clear strategy to close those gaps (which might include upskilling, reassigning or hiring team members).
Why Xero?
Offering very generous paid leave to use however you’d like (plus statutory holidays!), dedicated paid leave to care for your physical and mental wellbeing as well as an Employee Assistance Program to access mental health care for you and your family, health insurance, life insurance, and income protection, wellbeing and sports programmes, employee resource groups, 26 weeks of paid parental leave for primary caregivers, an Employee Share Plan, beautiful offices, flexible working, career development, and many other benefits that reflect our human value, you’ll do the best work of your life at Xero.
Our collaborative and inclusive culture is one we’re immensely proud of. We know that a diverse workforce is a strength that enables businesses, including ours, to better understand and serve customers, attract top talent and innovate successfully. We are a member of Pride in Diversity, in recognition of our inclusive workplace. Our goal is to make sure you feel welcome and supported to do the best work of your life.
At Xero we embrace diversity and inclusion and value a #challenge mindset. Research has shown that women and underrepresented groups are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single competency or experience . If you are excited about this role, but your past experience doesn't align perfectly, we encourage you to apply anyway. You could be just the right person for this role and Xero. If you have any support or access requirements, we encourage you to advise us at time of application and throughout the interview process.
Top Skills
AWS
GCP
What the Team is Saying
Rose
Health, Safety, Security & Environment Advisor
Sophia
Senior Account Manager
Am I A Good Fit?
Get Personalized Job Insights.
Our AI-powered fit analysis compares your resume with a job listing so you know if your skills & experience align.
Success! Refresh the page to see how your skills align with this role.
The Company
What We Do
Xero is a global small business platform with 3.95 million subscribers which includes a core accounting solution, payroll, workforce management, expenses and projects. Xero also has an extensive ecosystem of connected apps and connections to banks and other financial institutions helping small businesses access a range of solutions from within Xero’s open platform to help them run their business and manage their finances.
Why Work With Us
Xero is not like most companies. When you join Xero, you become part of something beautiful —a global community of people who are passionate about making an impact on the world. It’s a place where you can truly be yourself and find success in a way that’s meaningful to you.
Gallery
Xero Teams
Leadership
About our Teams
Xero Offices
Hybrid Workspace
Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
Join us from home or at one of our beautiful workspaces. Xero has offices in Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Singapore, and South Africa.
Typical time on-site:
Flexible
Wellington, NZ
Singapore
Auckland, NZ
Brisbane
Denver, CO
Melbourne (HQ)
London, GB
Napier, NZ
New York, NY
San Mateo, CA
Sydney, NSW
Toronto, Ontario
Learn more
