Search Engineer

Xero; Melbourne; On-site; AUD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Xero’s Search team is seeking a Search Engineer to help maintain and evolve a large-scale search cluster powering 200,000+ daily users and 50+ million documents.

You’ll contribute to both search-specific and generalist engineering tasks, collaborate with senior engineers through code reviews, and gradually take on larger responsibilities as you grow.

Remote within AU/NZ with quarterly in-person collaboration in Melbourne when desired.

Qualifications

• Experience building or maintaining search systems.
• Strong software engineering principles and clean code.
• Willingness to learn and tackle complex problems.
• Ability to collaborate across distributed teams in engineering, product and infrastructure.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to Horizon 2 platform rebuild and modernisation efforts.
• Maintain and evolve the search infrastructure targeting 99.9% uptime.
• Work with PM, Principal Architect and Catalyst Platform team.
• Engage in cross-team reviews and grow ownership of larger components.

Skills

Search engineering

Software fundamentals

Growth mindset

Collaboration skills

Initiative and ownership

Job description

The role and impact

Join Xero's Search team as a Search Engineer and help maintain and evolve one of the largest search clusters in the Southern Hemisphere. You'll work on infrastructure that powers Xero for 200,000+ daily active users, handling 50+ million searchable documents and 400TB of data at 99.9% uptime.

In this role, you'll grow your search engineering skills while contributing to meaningful projects. You'll work on both search-specific and generalist engineering tasks, collaborate with experienced engineers through code reviews, and gradually take on larger responsibilities as you develop expertise.

The team and how they connect

You'll be part of a small, tight-knit distributed team across Melbourne, New South Wales, and New Zealand, now part of Xero's Catalyst platform division. The team works collaboratively with a Product Manager, a Principal Architect, and the broader Catalyst Platform team. This is a great environment to learn search engineering at scale whilst working alongside senior engineers and technical leaders.

What the team is currently working on

• Horizon 2 platform rebuild - Contribute to a four-year search platform modernisation project

• Cluster maintenance and evolution - Help maintain our search infrastructure at 99.9% uptime across massive scale

• Operational Data Layer (ODL) integration - Work on ingestion pipeline integration with the new platform

• Exploring new partnerships - Collaborate on integrations with Mobile, Files, and AI-adjacent search capabilities

Where and how you can work

Work remotely within Australia or New Zealand or hybrid from one of our offices. The team gathers in Melbourne approximately every six months for in-person collaboration, and there are optional "boost days" for office work when you'd like to connect with colleagues face-to-face.

What we're looking for

• Search engineering experience - You've built or maintained search systems and are keen to deepen your expertise in this domain

• Solid software engineering fundamentals - You understand core software engineering principles and write clean, maintainable code

• Growth mindset - You're eager to learn from experienced engineers and tackle increasingly complex problems

• Collaboration skills - You work well with others across engineering, product, and infrastructure teams in a distributed environment

• Initiative and ownership - You take on tasks with enthusiasm and aren't afraid to ask questions when you need support