Principal Engineer
Xero is a beautiful, easy-to-use platform that helps small businesses and their accounting and bookkeeping advisors grow and thrive.
At Xero, our purpose is to make life better for people in small business, their advisors, and communities around the world. This purpose sits at the centre of everything we do. We support our people to do the best work of their lives so that they can help small businesses succeed through better tools, information and connections. Because when they succeed they make a difference, and when millions of small businesses are making a difference, the world is a more beautiful place.
How you'll make an impact
You'll work in collaboration with multiple teams within a product group to help create and deliver beautiful software to our customers, faster.
You'll help define the standard for engineering excellence at Xero and lead initiatives to grow the technical capabilities of engineers and evolve the technical architecture of our software in support of the product roadmap.
You'll understand the product vision & strategy and work with product and engineering leadership to ensure technical decisions and implementations are aligned with strategic goals. You'll lead the growth of our cross functional environment, contributing to the technical roadmap and architectural direction across the product group and wider if necessary.
You'll help teams build and manage software that solves engineering problems at scale. You will be enabled to seek clarity with technical complexities and be able to demonstrate smart ways to simplify. You'll be able to make data-driven decisions that will release value early to solve Xero customers' problems more effectively.
What you'll do
- Create software - Work on initiatives that span multiple teams to improve how Xero creates and delivers software. You'll guide engineering practices of teams, helping them achieve product goals via world-class engineering techniques. Advocate for the adoption of new technology and tooling to support product requirements. Guide teams in defining and implementing SLOs. Ensure security and data guidelines are implemented.
- Test software - Promote the quality engineering strategy and standards for Xero, and support teams in evolving their practices and skills to be effective and compliant. Identify and implement initiatives that li the quality capabilities of Xero's engineering teams. Energize the community of practice for quality.
- Resolve issues - Focus on systemic and strategic prevention of issues by implementing practices and tooling that make world class engineering easy, and limit the scope for failure either during the development lifecycle or in production.
- Engineering standards & frameworks - Be involved with the creation and promotion of Xero wide as well as portfolio level standards and frameworks. Research industry best practice and implement as appropriate in the context of Xero. Ensure team's needs and feedback is represented in upcoming standards.
- Continuous improvement - Proactively maintain, grow and share knowledge of development technologies used in the development of Xero's software applications.
- Deliver infrastructure in a production environment - Collect data and quantify the effect of automation at a product group level or wider. Ensure deployment pipelines are fit for purpose. Coach and support engineers to ensure all software is running as expected. Proactively work to prevent customer facing problems.
- Modern software and delivery practices - Proactive champion of agile and delivery practices who coaches and develops others in this space in order to ensure a consistent approach to ways of working. Working with the engineering leaders and agile practitioners to identify technical solutions that can help improve the product group processes.
- Recruitment - Participate in interviews and recruitment programs, actively engage with the external tech community, take part in external speaking engagements, and promote Xero brand.
How you'll do it
- Live Xero's vision and values - Keeps Xero's vision and values at the forefront of strategic decision-making and leadership. Communicates and helps others understand the importance of the vision and values. Translates the vision and values into day-to-day activities and behaviors.
- Communication skills - Communicates complex ideas skillfully and with nuance, and establishes alignment within the wider organization.
- Build relationships - Establishes a high level of trust and credibility with internal and external stakeholders. Role models effective relationship building to the wider team. Ensures the team has effective relationships with supporting teams across Xero.
- Growth mindset - Demonstrates that competency is not fixed but is enhanced through dedication and hard work. Can lead, coach and provide feedback to others on development plans and explain how this fits into the external market. Is intentional about own learning and sets clarity around learning outcomes for others.
- Innovation and Delivery - Leads teams to innovate and deliver technology across Xero and solve complex customer problems through software.
- Coaching and Mentorship - Instills and promotes a culture of learning and development within the team. Works with teams to make better technical decisions. Mentors Lead Engineers in the product areas.
- Evangelism - Introduces Xero in a positive light to an audience inside and outside the industry.
- Work Collaboratively - Influences outcomes at the highest level, moves beyond mere broadcasting, and sets best practices for others.
- Self-learning - Maintains in-depth knowledge of advances and learnings in technologies relevant to Xero's current and future engineering environment.
What you'll bring with you
- Able to regularly review delivery and production metrics to identify areas of improvement for product groups.
- Experience in developing techniques to quantify the cost of technical debt and when to pay it down.
- Ability to advocate for and help design automated processes and tooling that ensures products teams delivery are correct, secure, and safe to deploy.
- Extensive technical leadership experience on cloud-native platforms.
- Experience in coaching and mentoring engineers across multiple disciplines.
Xero celebrates diversity. We are committed to creating an inclusive environment where our employees can do the best work of their lives. We are committed to transparency and to equal pay for equal work. Total compensation for this role includes a base salary of $150,000 - 170,000, commensurate with experience, plus an annual grant of Xero shares, calculated as a percentage of base salary.
Xero offers access to low-cost, high-quality health care options through Cigna and Kaiser (in CA & CO only)
Xero will match 100% on the first 3% of 401k contributions plus 50% match on next 2% of contributions
Employees enjoy 21 days of paid time off per year
Employees also have 10 days of wellbeing leave to care for their minds, bodies, and families
US employees enjoy 11 paid holidays per year
Xero offers an industry-leading 26 weeks of parental leave at up to 100% pay
Xero offers a number of employee wellness programs, to include yoga, mindfulness and nutrition workshops, EAP, free flu shots, team meals, and a monthly wellbeing allowance
Why Xero?
Diversity of people brings diversity of thought, and we like that. A collaborative and inclusive environment is important to us. Working at Xero will provide you with a diverse and inclusive environment alongside people who will respect, challenge and support you to have fun while you do the best work of your life. We are a place where personal development, flexible working, innovation, and well-being are not just inspired but celebrated. We value our people and offer a wide range of compelling benefits and perks, including Xero shares and great parental leave policies.
Xero's collaborative culture is underscored by our values - #Ownership, #Challenge, #Beautiful, #Human and #Team - which empower us to understand and serve customers, attract top talent and continuously innovate. From the moment you step through our doors, you'll feel welcome and supported to do the best work of your life.
Please note that we currently require all employees and contractors to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to work from a Xero office, or engage in any face-to-face Xero business. Xero will work with anyone who is not vaccinated, or prefers not to disclose their vaccination status, to determine if any reasonable accommodations can be provided to ensure their role can be performed safely whilst the restriction is in place..