Lead Software Engineer - Mobile

Xero; City of Melbourne; Hybrid; AUD 170,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Xero seeks a Lead Engineer to join the teams behind the Xero Accounting App (XAA). You will balance fast product delivery with system health, mentor engineers, and shape what the squad builds for mobile experiences.

Based in Australia with a hybrid role in Melbourne or Sydney, you will work closely with Product and Design, tackle open-ended problems, improve reliability, and scale mobile applications for customers on the go.

Qualifications

• Strong React Native expertise with iOS/Android depth optional.
• Experience integrating back-end APIs and mobile backends.
• Mastery of software design patterns and distributed architectures.
• Proven ability to mentor engineers and raise technical bar.
• Customer-focused, action-oriented, thrives in fast-moving environments.

Responsibilities

• Lead and unblock the squad, defining what and how for product goals.
• Mentor engineers and foster an inclusive, high-performing culture.
• Balance rapid delivery with system health and engineering best practices.
• Champion production-first mindset with incident response and health monitoring.
• Drive efficiency and AI-driven improvements to reduce technical waste.

Skills

React Native

Swift

Kotlin

API integration

Distributed architectures

Cloud infrastructure

Mentoring

Job description

The role / impact

We are looking for a Lead Engineer to join the engineering teams behind the Xero Accounting App (XAA), our flagship mobile experience that helps small business owners stay on top of their finances wherever they are. You will balance high-velocity product delivery with a relentless focus on system health and engineering practices, leveraging AI to improve productivity and ship value to our customers, faster.

You'll tackle open-ended problems, exercise high-level technical judgment, and define both the what and the how for your squad's product and platform goals while keeping your hands in the code and your team technically unblocked.

You'll lift squad performance by providing goal clarity, removing barriers, mentoring engineers, and establishing a psychologically safe, inclusive culture.

The Team / How They Connect

We are the engineering teams behind the Xero Accounting mobile app. We thrive in a hybrid, high velocity and cross-functional environment, partnering closely with Product and Design teams to deliver beautiful mobile experiences for customers, faster. We collaborate deeply with web, platform and domain teams to ensure a reliable and seamless experience across all channels.

We are investing heavily in our mobile engineering capability and this is an exciting time to join as we scale our teams and accelerate value delivery for our customers.

The team is currently working on

• Ship Value: Lead and deliver high impact mobile workflows for key jobs-to-be-done such as a new dashboard, notifications and tasks, insights, banking flow improvements, and mobile subscriptions, delivering experiences that surpass customer expectations.
• Operational Excellence: Championing a "production-first" mindset. You will uphold our solemn responsibility for availability, accuracy, security and scalability by automating delivery pipelines and solving common failure patterns. You will lead incident responses and champion proactive health monitoring to ensure our systems remain resilient under pressure.
• Efficiency: Get better at our work over time to deliver value more efficiently. You will drive efficiency by identifying technical waste, simplifying complex designs, and leveraging modern practices (including AI) to deliver value to customers faster.

Where And How You Can Work

Our teams are located in Australia and this hybrid role is based in Melbourne or Sydney, offering the flexibility to balance deep-focus work with high-bandwidth collaboration in our beautiful offices.

Here are some of the things we are looking for

• React Native is our preferred platform and we are looking for engineers with strong React Native expertise. We also welcome strong iOS (Swift) or Android (Kotlin) specialists who bring genuine platform depth and are open to growing within a React Native ecosystem over time.
• Solid experience with back-end API integration and mobile backend development matters to us. You are comfortable working across the mobile and backend boundary, understanding and contributing to how APIs are designed and built, not just consuming them.
• You bring a mastery of software design patterns, distributed architectures, and cloud infrastructure, with a track record of building robust mobile applications at scale.
• You are a natural mentor and coach who raises the technical bar of the squad, manages multiple workstreams without losing momentum, and communicates with equal clarity to engineers, product managers, and non-technical stakeholders.
• You are customer obsessed, biased toward action, and thrive in fast-moving environments where you turn ambiguity into clear direction for your team.