Principal Platform Engineer — Developer Experience & Tooling

Xero Limited; Melbourne; Hybrid; AUD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Xero Limited is seeking a Principal Engineer for the Engineering Productivity team. You will partner with engineers across the organisation to build frictionless, developer-first platform tools that accelerate shipping high-impact software at scale.

You’ll influence tooling, practices, and culture to empower thousands of engineers across Xero. You’ll tackle complex technical challenges, optimise developer workflows, and contribute to AI-native development practices.

Qualifications

• Proven ability to design and build developer-focused tools and platforms.
• Experience delivering scalable platform products used by software engineers.
• Strong collaboration with product, infrastructure, and leadership teams.
• Familiarity with AI-native development practices or modern development lifecycles.

Responsibilities

• Partner with engineering communities to reduce friction and accelerate delivery.
• Identify high-impact problems across the engineering landscape and drive solutions.
• Advocate for platform-as-a-product thinking and customer-centric design.
• Mentor and influence teams to lift engineering capabilities and practices.

Skills

DevEx

DevOps

Platform Engineering

Platform as product

AI-native development

Stakeholder communication

Mentoring engineers

Job description

Xero Limited is seeking a Principal Engineer for the Engineering Productivity team. You will partner with engineers across the organisation to build frictionless, developer-first platform tools that accelerate shipping high-impact software at scale.

You’ll influence tooling, practices, and culture to empower thousands of engineers across Xero. You’ll tackle complex technical challenges, optimise developer workflows, and contribute to AI-native development practices.