Principal Engineer - Payments Products & Platform

Xero; Sydney; Hybrid; AUD 250,000 - 360,000; Full time

Job summary

Xero reimagines payments software at scale. We are hiring Principal Engineers to shape technical strategy across multiple teams, guiding a 40–50 person portfolio and influencing architectural direction.

You’ll partner with senior stakeholders, drive engineering standards, and mentor engineers while delivering resilient, scalable systems for global payment flows. You’ll collaborate across Payments Products & Experiences and Payments Platform and participate in the Xero Principal Engineers

Qualifications

• Deep experience designing and running large-scale distributed systems in production.
• API-first thinking across web, API and data layers.
• Fluency in at least one modern backend language.
• Experience with SQL and NoSQL data stores.
• Cloud-native platforms, ideally AWS.
• Hands-on through pairing, spikes and code.
• Interest in utilising AI tooling to automate tasks and improve outcomes.
• Mentoring Staff and Senior engineers across cross-team initiatives.

Responsibilities

• Shape technical strategy across multiple teams and portfolios.
• Set long-term direction for the payments platforms and experiences.Mentor staff and senior engineers to lift engineering standards.
• Drive architecture decisions and best practices within Xero's Principal community.
• Collaborate with product, engineering and senior stakeholders to align on priorities.
• Lead efforts on global scalability and cross-team initiatives.

Skills

Distributed systems

API-first

Backend language

SQL/NoSQL

AWS

AI tooling

Mentoring

Tools

AWS

SQL

NoSQL

Job description

The role

Xero reimagined accounting software. Now we’re reimagining how small businesses get paid and how money moves. We're making a critical, multi-year investment in two connected engineering portfolios, Payments Products & Experiences and Payments Platform, and we're hiring a Principal Engineer for each. As our three-year payments strategy reaches a turning point, you'll help shape what comes next, with domain-level influence over the next two to three years.

You'll shape technical strategy across multiple teams, partnering with senior stakeholders to turn complex requirements into scalable, resilient systems. Staying close to the technical detail, you'll set the example for a portfolio of 40 to 50 engineers. You'll also join a global community of Principal Engineers across Xero, driving engineering standards, architecture, and best practices.

You'll Go Bold by setting long-term direction, and Go Together by bringing product, engineering and senior stakeholders with you.

The teams

Payments Products & Experiences: this portfolio is made up of our Get Paid and Growth teams, builds the checkout, payment methods, flexible payments and AI payment agents that help small businesses get paid on time.

Payments Platform: this portfolio is the engine underneath, with provider integrations, bill payments and a single, product-agnostic API that other Xero teams build on.

Together they move billions of dollars across more than 150,000 transactions a day, a number set to double as we grow into the UK and US.

The teams are currently working on

• Tech stack: microservices across web, API and data layers, built in languages such as C#, Java, Go or C++, running on AWS with SQL and NoSQL data stores.

• Current focus: reviewing existing payments systems to work out what to extend, migrate or rebuild, alongside Growth experiments and AI-powered payment chasing.

• Future focus: a multi-year payments architecture covering agentic payment workflows, payments inside AI assistants and recurring payments.

• Global scale: replatforming payment methods and designing global rails and a ledger ready for new markets.

Where and how you can work

You'll be based in Sydney or Melbourne, working a hybrid model that blends time together in our modern offices with the flexibility of working from home. Boost days bring teams together to connect and collaborate in person. With colleagues across Australia and the US and payment flows that run around the clock, you'll also work across time zones.

Some of the things we're looking for

• You bring deep experience designing and running large-scale distributed systems in production, balancing reliability, performance and cost, and any payments or fintech experience is a real plus.

• API-first thinking is second nature, and you're at home across web, API and data layers, with fluency in at least one modern backend language, SQL and NoSQL stores, and cloud-native platforms, ideally AWS.

• Legacy-heavy systems are a puzzle you enjoy, and you make clear, practical calls on whether to extend, migrate or build while staying hands-on through pairing, spikes and code.

• A strong interest in utilising AI tooling is essential, as you will model how to use these technologies to automate tasks and improve engineering outcomes.

• Your background shows a deep curiosity for growth hacking and a proven ability to design and analyse A/B tests that drive product usage.

• You'll Go Further by mentoring Staff and Senior engineers, shaping cross-team initiatives with Xero's Principal community and setting standards that lift engineering across Xero.