Xero · 2 months ago
Principal Backend Engineer, Payments Platform
United States
Full-time
Remote
Lead/Staff
$224K/yr - $302K/yr
12+ years expXero is a company focused on helping businesses by automating routine tasks and connecting them with actionable insights. They are seeking a Principal Engineer for their Payments Platform to shape the technical vision and architecture for global money movement, ensuring the design of scalable and reliable systems while also mentoring and elevating engineering quality across teams.
AccountingBillingFinTechPersonal FinanceSaaSSoftware
Responsibilities
Define and drive the long-term architecture and technical direction for the Payments Platform, balancing strategic vision with incremental delivery
Architect, design, and influence the implementation of highly scalable, reliable, and resilient systems powering global payments
Evaluate existing systems, decide when to reuse vs. rebuild, and design smooth migration paths that deliver value while modernizing the platform
Contribute to production code, review complex designs, and serve as a trusted expert for debugging and operational excellence
Partner with multiple product, security, risk, and platform teams to align strategies, resolve dependencies, and deliver cohesive solutions across Xero
Champion practices around observability, reliability, and performance; raise the bar for how Xero designs, deploys, and operates critical systems
Guide Staff and Senior engineers, building technical leadership capacity across the org. Foster a culture of collaboration, innovation, and excellence
Work closely with senior product and business leaders to ensure technical decisions align with customer and business outcomes
Bring industry best practices and emerging technologies into Xero, experimenting thoughtfully to push the platform forward
Qualification
Required
12+ years of software engineering experience, including extensive experience designing and operating large-scale distributed systems in production
Proven track record as a Principal/Architect-level technical leader driving cross-org initiatives and influencing technical direction at scale
Deep expertise in building scalable, reliable, resilient, and performant systems, with firsthand experience in operational excellence (monitoring, on-call, incident response, observability)
Strong proficiency in at least one modern backend stack (e.g., C#, Java, Golang, C++) and with cloud-native platforms (AWS strongly preferred)
Advanced experience with both SQL and NoSQL databases, and designing data models at scale
Demonstrated ability to define multi-year technical strategy, and translate it into practical phases that deliver incremental business value
Domain expertise in payments/fintech or other highly regulated, compliance-heavy industries — required
Strong collaboration and communication skills, able to influence senior leaders, cross-functional stakeholders, and engineers across multiple teams
Mentorship and leadership at scale: proven ability to elevate engineering capability across teams, mentor Staff and Senior engineers, and set org-wide technical standards
Hands-on mindset: ability to stay close to the code, dive into technical deep-dives, and guide teams through complex architectural challenges
Ability to assess existing systems vs. new builds — recognizing when to leverage what exists, when to extend or evolve it, and when to design net-new systems. Skilled in planning pragmatic migrations, swaps, and transitions to minimize disruption while maximizing value
Benefits
Very generous paid leave to use however you’d like (plus statutory holidays!)
Dedicated paid leave to care for your physical and mental wellbeing
Employee Assistance Program to access mental health care for you and your family
Employee resource groups
Wellbeing programming and allowances
Medical, dental, vision, and disability insurance
Fertility and family forming financial support
401k contribution matching
26 weeks of paid parental leave for primary caregivers
Employee Share Plan
Beautiful offices with snacks and break areas
Flexible working
Career development
Company
Xero
Xero is an online accounting software for small businesses that automating invoicing, bank reconciliations, and reporting.
1001-5000 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Xero has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (4)
2024 (2)
2023 (1)
2022 (3)
2021 (4)
2020 (3)
Funding
Current Stage
Public CompanyTotal Funding
$1.61BKey Investors
Callaghan InnovationTCVAccel
2024-06-05Post Ipo Debt· $925M
2021-09-08Grant· $0.06M
2020-10-23Grant· $0.06M
Leadership Team
James Coleman
Head of Developer Relations
Peggy Lee
Head of Communications, Asia
Recent News
TradingView
2025-12-21
Company data provided by crunchbase