Principal Engineering - Product & Technology

Sorry, this job was removed at 12:29 a.m. (CST) on Friday, May 02, 2025
Be an Early Applicant
4 Locations
Remote or Hybrid
Cloud • Fintech • Information Technology • Machine Learning • Software
At Xero, we’re here to help you supercharge your business.
The Role

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.


Principal Engineer Opportunities at Xero!


At Xero, Principal Engineers play a pivotal role in driving technical excellence and innovation across our diverse Product and Technology teams. This is an opportunity to leverage your deep expertise in areas such as building and maintaining robust APIs, leading complex cloud-native projects, and championing engineering best practices that impact a global platform serving millions of small businesses.


Across various teams, you'll contribute to technical vision, mentor engineers to elevate their skills, and collaborate on solutions that balance immediate needs with long-term strategic goals. You'll be instrumental in guiding non-functional design aspects like security, scalability, and performance, as well as advocating for automation and quantifiable approaches to managing technical debt.


If you're a seasoned technical leader with a strong track record in delivering impactful solutions, fostering engineering growth, and influencing technical direction, explore the range of Principal Engineer opportunities at Xero. Join us in building the future of small business.

What you'll bring to the role:

  • Hands-on experience building and maintaining robust APIs. Demonstrate a strong command of API design principles, security measures, and performance optimisation
  • Proven experience in tech leading large, complex projects to delivery, ensuring technical excellence and alignment with strategic goals.
  • Extensive technical leadership experience on cloud-native platforms, with a strong focus on scalability, reliability, and performance.
  • Strong communicator—able to develop compelling, clear, and focused messages and effectively present them at the executive level.
  • Demonstrated ability to mentor and coach engineers (across all levels) on technical challenges and career development.
  • Experience contributing to technical vision and advocating for engineering best practices across a portfolio.
  • Skilled in developing and implementing techniques to quantify the cost of technical debt and determine when to address it.
  • Ability to advocate for and design automated processes and tooling that ensure product delivery is correct, secure, and safe to deploy.
  • Proactive in identifying and driving opportunities for improvement by regularly reviewing delivery and production metrics.
  • Strong problem-solving skills, simplifying complex technical challenges into clear, actionable outcomes for teams.
  • A commitment to fostering a psychologically safe, inclusive environment that supports collaboration and innovation.

What you'll do:

  • Technical coaching and mentoring our engineers to reach their full potential
  • Assist the teams to contribute to and translate architecture into a technical vision and roadmap across the domain and then assist in implementing that vision over time
  • Collaborate with various organisational platforms, to deliver on best engineering practices
  • Work with our teams to create solutions while meeting requirements and balancing the goals and constraints of current solution design with desired end state with the responsibility for ensuring the right tool/framework/technique is used for the right job
  • Championing and driving engineering principles and practices including assisting in the implementation of new standards, technologies or methodologies
  • Provide guidance on non-functional design elements in solutions including security, scalability and performance,  monitoring and alerting, analytics, documentation and quality
  • Guide and influence technical  related decisions across the teams

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, free medical insurance, 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.

Similar Jobs

Xero Logo Xero

Software Engineer

Cloud • Fintech • Information Technology • Machine Learning • Software
Remote or Hybrid
4 Locations
4500 Employees

Xero Logo Xero

Senior Front-end Engineer

Cloud • Fintech • Information Technology • Machine Learning • Software
Remote or Hybrid
2 Locations
4500 Employees

Xero Logo Xero

Data Annotations Analyst (Tax Expert)-3 month contract

Cloud • Fintech • Information Technology • Machine Learning • Software
Remote or Hybrid
Auckland, NZL
4500 Employees

Xero Logo Xero

Senior Engineer

Cloud • Fintech • Information Technology • Machine Learning • Software
Remote or Hybrid
2 Locations
4500 Employees
Get Personalized Job Insights.
Our AI-powered fit analysis compares your resume with a job listing so you know if your skills & experience align.

The Company
HQ: Wellington
4,500 Employees
Year Founded: 2006

What We Do

Xero is small business accounting software that provides a platform on which businesses can build a fully integrated solution. It’s designed to make life better for people in small business, their advisors, and communities around the world. Xero minimises tedious admin by automating routine tasks, delivers valuable insights when needed, and brings together business data, trusted advisors, and powerful apps in one intuitive platform. By alleviating pain points, Xero empowers small business owners to supercharge their business, simplifying the complex and freeing up time from manual admin so they can focus on what really matters to build the business they’ve always envisaged.

Why Work With Us

Xero is a human-centric organization where you’ll have a tangible impact on the success of small businesses and their communities, globally. Our team of energised, forward-thinkers work to make life better for our customers and each other every day. We’re also always committed to supporting you with a flexible environment.

Gallery

Gallery
Gallery
Gallery
Gallery
Gallery
Gallery
Gallery
Gallery
Gallery
Gallery

Xero 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
Company Office Image
HQWellington, NZ
Auckland, NZ
Brisbane
Calgary
Denver, CO
Melbourne (HQ)
London, GB
Napier, NZ
New York, NY
Company Office Image
San Mateo, CA
Singapore
Sydney, NSW
Toronto, Ontario
Learn more

Sign up now Access later

Create Free Account

Please log in or sign up to report this job.

Create Free Account