Engineering Manager: AI-First, High-Scale Systems

Xero; United Kingdom; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Xero is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead a high-performing, inclusive team, balancing rapid delivery with a relentless focus on technical excellence and system health. You will champion AI-native workflows and guide the team to solve complex technical challenges that align with business goals.

You will partner with Product and Design, modernise architectures, embed AI-native practices across the SDLC, and drive visibility into system health for high-scale, reliable services.

Qualifications

• Extensive professional software engineering experience delivering complex systems.
• Proven experience leading, coaching and performance-managing engineers.
• Ability to translate business goals into executable engineering plans.
• Hands-on experience with production code, reviews, and guiding engineering decisions.
• Experience with high-scale, high-availability distributed systems and incident response.
• Experience adopting AI-native engineering workflows to improve productivity and quality.

Responsibilities

• Lead a high-performing inclusive team to deliver high-quality software.
• Balance roadmap delivery with long-term system health and team growth.
• Guide the team in AI-native workflows across the SDLC to boost velocity.
• Collaborate with Product and Design to shape impactful solutions.
• Drive architectural modernization and CI/CD maturity to reduce risk.
• Improve system design for high-scale distributed systems and reliability.

Skills

Software engineering

Team leadership

Strategic planning

Hands-on coding

Distributed systems

AI-native workflows

Job description

Xero is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead a high-performing, inclusive team, balancing rapid delivery with a relentless focus on technical excellence and system health. You will champion AI-native workflows and guide the team to solve complex technical challenges that align with business goals.

You will partner with Product and Design, modernise architectures, embed AI-native practices across the SDLC, and drive visibility into system health for high-scale, reliable services.