Engineer - Payments Platform

Xero; Vancouver; Hybrid; CAD 132,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Xero is seeking a senior backend engineer to help build payment platforms and capabilities that support money movement across invoicing, payments, payroll, and future payment experiences. You will own meaningful engineering problems, building reliable, secure and scalable software where financial accuracy matters.

You will collaborate with engineering, product, and operations partners to shape technical decisions, improve architecture, and ensure controls protect customers and their money, while

Qualifications

• Backend systems experience in production.
• Distributed systems with clear service boundaries and resilience.
• Experience with transactional data, correctness and auditability.
• Ability to make pragmatic architectural decisions and trade-offs.
• Focus on automated testing, deployment, and observability.

Responsibilities

• Own substantial engineering problems and build reliable, secure, scalable software.
• Collaborate with product and operations to align technical decisions with customer outcomes.
• Shape architecture and trade-offs while balancing delivery and controls to protect customers.

Skills

Backend engineering

Distributed systems

Transactional data

Architectural decisions

Observability

Automation/AI tools

Cross-team collaboration

Testing

Job description

The role / impact

You will help build the platforms and product capabilities that support money movement through Xero, from collecting invoice payments and paying bills to supporting payroll and future payment experiences. Your work will make payments feel more connected within Xero, helping small businesses manage their money with greater ease and confidence.

You will take ownership of meaningful engineering problems, building reliable, secure and scalable software where financial accuracy matters. Working closely with engineering, product and operational partners, you will help shape technical decisions, make trade-offs clear and balance delivery with the controls needed to protect customers and their money.

Through thoughtful communication, knowledge sharing and constructive feedback, you will contribute to an inclusive team culture and help improve how a growing engineering organization works.

The team / how they connect

You will join Payments Platform Engineering, an early‑stage organization building the foundations for collecting and paying money through Xero. The team is creating reusable capabilities that can support multiple products, payment methods, providers and regions, while staying closely connected to customer needs.

The work spans payment orchestration, provider integrations, onboarding and verification, risk, reconciliation and internal ledger capabilities. As the organization takes shape, you will have the opportunity to influence architecture, challenge assumptions and help define how payment experiences are built and scaled across Xero.

The team is currently working on / Initially, you will focus on

• Evolving systems tightly coupled to invoicing into reusable payment capabilities that support multiple products, providers and regions.
• Building payment orchestration and provider integrations, with clear boundaries between payment methods, providers and the networks that move money.
• Developing foundations across customer onboarding, know-your-business verification, entity management, risk and compliance.
• Strengthening reconciliation, dispute handling and internal ledger capabilities so financial events are represented accurately and can be traced.
• Supporting bill payments and broader incoming and outgoing money flows, with reliability, security and observability built in.
• Applying AI and automation where they can reduce manual effort, while maintaining clear controls and appropriate human oversight.

Your initial area of ownership will sit within these priorities, with room to shape both the technical approach and how the team delivers.

Where and how you can work

This role is based in Vancouver. We operate on a hybrid model where you will spend one to two days a week in the office for collaborative technical discussions and team alignment, with the flexibility to work from home on the other days.

Here are some of the things we are looking for

• You bring strong backend software engineering experience and a track record of building and operating reliable services in production.
• You understand distributed systems and can reason through service boundaries,consistency, resilience and failure handling.
• You have practical experience working with transactional data, where correctness, integrity and traceability are essential.
• You can work through ambiguous problems, make pragmatic architectural decisions and recognise when to improve an existing system or take a new approach.
• You take ownership beyond implementation, considering automated testing, deployment, observability and the ongoing operation of your services.
• You communicate clearly and collaborate well across engineering, product and operational teams, connecting technical decisions to customer outcomes.
• You are interested in using AI tools to improve engineering productivity and exploring automation with appropriate controls and human oversight.

Experience in payments, financial systems or other environments where accuracy and auditability are critical would be valuable.

Compensation & Total Rewards

At Xero, we value the impact and skills you bring to the team. We believe in a Total Package philosophy - ensuring your value is recognized through a holistic lens that includes base salary, performance incentives, and world-class benefits.

The expected base salary range for this role is 131,800 - 150,000 CAD.

Individual pay is determined by various factors, including geography, level of experience, and the specific skills you bring to the role.

In addition to base pay, Xero’s roles are eligible for the following forms of variable compensation:

Variable Pay: Permanent employees are eligible to participate in our annual bonus and equity (RSU) programs. You may also be eligible for performance‑based cash or equity (RSUs) incentives depending on your role level, and company performance.

Comprehensive Benefits World-class health, wellness, and retirement programs. Xero Perks including Wellbeing days, generous leave, and dedicated professional development budgets.

This is a posting for an existing vacancy.

Xero uses AI to help screen applications based on job‑related qualifications. These tools assist our recruiters but do not make automated hiring decisions. A human recruiter reviews all candidates before any hiring action is taken.