Prinicipal Engineer

Xero; Auckland; On-site; NZD 170,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Xero in Auckland is seeking a Principal Engineer to lead large, complex cloud-native initiatives and set the standard for engineering excellence across our product groups.

You will collaborate with leadership to shape long‑term roadmaps, drive data‑driven architectural decisions, and guide multiple teams toward delivering scalable software that solves real customer problems at scale.

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading large, complex technical initiatives.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts to senior stakeholders.
• Experience contributing to long-term technical roadmaps.
• Skilled at deconstructing challenges into actionable outcomes.
• Experience managing technical debt and remediation.
• Mentorship and fostering inclusive engineering culture.

Responsibilities

• Guide engineering practices across multiple teams and establish portfolio direction.
• Design scalable, reliable cloud-native applications and deployment pipelines.
• Promote quality standards, define SLOs, and ensure security guidelines.
• Prevent production issues through tooling and best practices and on-call rotation participation.
• Shape DevOps culture and quantify the cost of technical debt.
• Mentor engineers and foster a psychologically safe, high-performing environment.
• Act as an ambassador for Xero’s engineering brand and participate in recruitment.

Skills

Proven technical leadership

Executive communication

Strategic architectural vision

Pragmatic problem solving

Technical debt management

Mentorship & culture

Job description

About Xero

At Xero, we’re here to make running a business beautiful. By making small businesses more efficient every day, connecting them with big business technology, and empowering a community behind them, their potential is limitless. When that happens, we’re not only helping small businesses we’ll be building a stronger economy that can change the world.

At Xero, we’re here to make running a business beautiful. By making small businesses more efficient every day, connecting them with big business technology, and empowering a community behind them, their potential is limitless. When that happens, we’re not only helping small businesses we’ll be building a stronger economy that can change the world.

How You’ll Make An Impact

As a Principal Engineer, you will work in collaboration across multiple teams within our product group to help create and deliver world‑class software to our customers, faster.

You will help define the standard for engineering excellence at Xero, evolving our technical architecture in alignment with product strategy, and leading initiatives that grow the technical capabilities of our engineers. Partnering closely with engineering leadership (including Stephen Dewar), you will influence group‑level technical strategy, break down organizational silos, and drive data‑driven architectural decisions that release value early to solve complex customer problems at scale.

What You’ll Do

• Engineering Excellence & Architecture: Guide engineering practices across multiple teams, advocate for new technologies and tooling, and establish portfolio-wide architectural direction.
• Scalable Systems & Infrastructure: Contribute to the design of highly scalable, reliable, and performant cloud‑native applications. Guide teams in balancing automation, performance, operational health, and deployment pipelines.
• Quality & Reliability: Promote Xero‑wide quality standards, guide teams in defining and implementing SLOs, and ensure security and data guidelines are embedded across systems.
• Systemic Issue Prevention: Focus on proactive prevention of production issues through robust tooling and engineering best practices. Participate in the team on‑call rotation and help refocus projects when needed.
• Technical Debt & DevOps Culture: Shape thinking around DevOps culture, establish frameworks to quantify the cost of technical debt, and drive strategic pay‑down of tech debt.
• Coaching & Talent Growth: Mentor and coach engineers across all levels (including Lead Engineers), creating a psychologically safe, inclusive, and high‑performing environment.
• Recruitment & Community: Participate in interviewing, actively engage with the external tech community, and act as an ambassador for Xero’s engineering brand.

What You’ll Bring With You

• Proven Technical Leadership: Extensive experience leading large, complex technical initiatives to delivery on cloud‑native platforms, with a track record of scaling for performance and reliability.
• Executive Communication: Outstanding ability to communicate complex technical concepts with nuance and clarity to technical teams and senior executive leaders alike.
• Strategic Architectural Vision: Demonstrated capability in contributing to long‑term technical roadmaps and aligning engineering delivery with broader business strategy.
• Pragmatic Problem Solving: Skilled in deconstructing complex challenges into clear, actionable outcomes and navigating technical trade‑offs.
• Technical Debt Management: Proven ability to implement frameworks to quantify technical debt and prioritize remediation alongside feature delivery.
• Mentorship & Culture: A strong commitment to coaching engineers, driving delivery practices, and fostering an inclusive, psychologically safe, and collaborative engineering culture.

Why Xero?

At Xero, we value our culture and live our values every day:

• We Make it Beautiful: We challenge ourselves to dream big, innovate, and inspire.
• We Make it Happen: We value progress over perfection, driving clarity, decisiveness, and accountability.
• We Make it Human: We care personally and challenge respectfully in an empathetic and inclusive environment.
• We Make it Together: We build trust through transparency, diverse perspectives, and strong relationships.