Staff Backend Lead - Payments Platform & AI-Driven Systems

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San Mateo (CA)

Hybrid

USD 206,600 - 258,200

Full time

14 days+

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Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Performance incentives

Medical benefits

PTO 21 days

Wellbeing leave

Xtra Leave

Volunteer day

Paid holidays

Parental leave

Job summary

Xero is seeking a senior backend engineer to shape the technical foundation for money movement and global product lines. You will design reliable, scalable, and secure services for the Payments Platform and contribute to production code and proofs‑of‑concepts.

You will collaborate with product, security, risk, and operations, mentor engineers, and champion AI tooling to accelerate development. The role offers hybrid work, strong compensation, equity, and world‑class benefits.

Qualifications

Proven track record delivering highly available, distributed backend systems.
Strong understanding of system architecture and API design.
Experience with SQL and NoSQL databases.
Hands-on contribution to production code and proofs-of-concepts.
Leadership in mentoring engineers and fostering inclusive culture.
Ability to break down complex problems and drive agile execution.
Collaborates with Product, Design and cross-functional teams.
Champions advanced AI tooling to accelerate development workflows.

Responsibilities

Design and build payment platform capabilities (orchestration, risks & fraud, multi-provider) to accelerate product development.
Develop a global bill payment product to streamline small business cash flow.
Build core high-throughput platform services.
Integrate and champion AI capabilities to improve engineering productivity.