# Engineering Manager
**Company:** [Xero](https://scaleengineer.com/companies/xero)
Lead a high-performing engineering team at Xero, a global cloud-based accounting platform serving small businesses. As an Engineering Manager, you'll balance product delivery velocity with technical excellence, driving architectural modernization, AI-native workflows, and system health across distributed systems. The role requires extensive software engineering experience, proven leadership capabilities, and hands-on technical credibility to guide complex engineering decisions.
**Role:** Engineering Manager
**Seniority:** Manager
**Locations:** UK: London (7 Devonshire Square)
**Salary:** 120000–180000 GBP
[Apply](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/xero/54422f60-ab41-4624-a190-1f7ef3641fdd)
Canonical: https://scaleengineer.com/jobs/xero/engineering-manager-54422f60
---
## Responsibilities

- Team Leadership and Development: Lead and mentor a results-driven engineering team operating with clear goals and ownership, fostering a high-trust, blameless problem-solving culture. Demonstrate hands-on coaching and performance management to build team capability, improve technical skills, and support career progression of individual contributors.
- Technical Anchor and Strategic Guidance: Serve as the technical anchor for your team, providing hands-on experience writing, reviewing, and debugging production code. Guide complex technical decisions with credibility earned through active software engineering practice, ensuring alignment with architectural best practices and system design principles.
- Architectural Modernization: Lead initiatives to modernize system architectures and improve CI/CD maturity, reducing operational risk and technical debt. Drive architectural decisions for high-scale, high-availability distributed systems that support Xero's global cloud-based accounting platform serving millions of small businesses.
- AI-Native Workflow Integration: Champion the adoption of AI-native engineering workflows across the software development lifecycle, embedding AI-powered tools and practices to boost developer velocity, reduce toil, and enhance code quality. Lead by example in adopting and advocating for these emerging technologies.
- Business-Engineering Translation: Translate business goals and product requirements into executable engineering plans and technical roadmaps. Balance short-term delivery velocity with long-term operational excellence, ensuring predictable roadmap delivery while maintaining system health and engineering quality standards.
- System Health and Incident Leadership: Drive visibility into system health, operational metrics, and technical debt to enable proactive improvements. Lead or oversee incident response for high-availability distributed systems, establishing blameless post-incident review processes and continuous improvement practices.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work closely with Product and Design partners to shape solutions that align with customer needs and business objectives. Foster clear communication channels between engineering, product, and design teams to ensure technical feasibility and optimal feature delivery.

## Requirements

### education

- {"name":"Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or Related Field","description":"Formal education in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Mathematics, or related discipline. Equivalent professional experience and demonstrated technical depth can substitute for formal degree requirements."}
- {"name":"Continuous Learning","description":"Commitment to ongoing professional development through conferences, certifications, technical blogs, and community engagement. Stay current with evolving software engineering practices, architectural patterns, and emerging technologies including AI and machine learning."}

### technical

- {"name":"Distributed Systems Architecture","description":"Proven experience building, scaling, and operating high-availability distributed systems at scale, including understanding of consistency models, fault tolerance, load balancing, and resilience patterns. Must be able to guide architectural decisions for systems serving millions of concurrent users."}
- {"name":"CI/CD and DevOps Maturity","description":"Deep experience with continuous integration, continuous deployment practices, and modern DevOps tooling. Ability to assess maturity levels, identify bottlenecks, and drive improvements to reduce deployment risk and increase release frequency."}
- {"name":"Production Code Proficiency","description":"Hands-on ability to write, review, and debug production code in relevant programming languages and frameworks. Maintain technical credibility through active coding practices, code review leadership, and staying current with language and framework evolution."}
- {"name":"AI-Native Development Practices","description":"Experience or strong aptitude for embedding AI-powered tools and workflows across the software development lifecycle, including code generation, testing automation, and developer productivity enhancements. Familiarity with large language models and AI-assisted development platforms."}
- {"name":"System Observability and Monitoring","description":"Proficiency in implementing and interpreting system monitoring, logging, tracing, and alerting infrastructure. Experience with observability platforms and metrics-driven approaches to identifying and resolving performance bottlenecks and operational issues."}

### experience

- {"name":"Software Engineering Leadership","description":"Minimum 10+ years of professional software engineering experience with at least 3-5 years in formal engineering management or technical leadership roles. Demonstrated track record of growing engineers from junior to senior levels, developing their technical capabilities and career trajectories."}
- {"name":"Complex Systems Delivery","description":"Proven experience shipping and maintaining complex systems in production environments serving significant scale. Track record of translating architectural vision into executable plans, managing technical tradeoffs, and delivering on business commitments while maintaining code quality."}
- {"name":"Incident Leadership and Postmortems","description":"Experience leading or overseeing incident response for critical systems, conducting blameless postmortem analysis, and driving organizational learning from incidents. Demonstrated ability to manage high-pressure situations and implement systemic improvements."}
- {"name":"Technical Debt Management","description":"Experience strategically managing technical debt, prioritizing refactoring efforts, and communicating the business impact of technical investments to non-technical stakeholders. Track record of improving system reliability and maintainability over time."}

## Skills

### required

- {"name":"Engineering Team Leadership","description":"Proven ability to recruit, onboard, and develop high-performing engineering teams. Experience with performance management, career development conversations, and creating psychological safety for blameless problem-solving."}
- {"name":"Technical Decision-Making","description":"Capability to evaluate technical tradeoffs, lead architectural discussions, and make decisions that balance short-term velocity with long-term maintainability. Experience guiding technology selection and framework adoption."}
- {"name":"Strategic Planning and Execution","description":"Ability to translate business requirements into multi-quarter technical roadmaps, coordinate cross-team dependencies, and drive execution against committed timelines while managing scope and quality."}
- {"name":"Communication and Storytelling","description":"Strong ability to communicate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders. Experience presenting technical strategies to leadership, documenting architectural decisions, and advocating for engineering investments."}
- {"name":"Problem-Solving and Debugging","description":"Strong analytical and debugging skills with ability to investigate production issues, identify root causes, and implement systematic improvements. Comfortable working with complex multi-service architectures."}
- {"name":"Operational Excellence","description":"Experience establishing and maintaining operational standards, implementing monitoring and alerting strategies, and driving improvements to system reliability and performance metrics."}

### preferred

- {"name":"SaaS Platform Experience","description":"Experience building or managing engineering teams at SaaS companies, particularly in fintech, accounting software, or business-to-business platforms. Understanding of subscription models, customer lifecycle, and regulatory compliance in cloud-based services."}
- {"name":"Global Platform Operations","description":"Experience operating distributed systems across multiple regions or time zones, managing multi-tenancy architectures, and scaling systems to serve global customer bases with varying regulatory requirements."}
- {"name":"Microservices Architecture","description":"Hands-on experience designing, implementing, or operating microservices-based architectures, including service discovery, API gateway patterns, distributed tracing, and eventual consistency models."}
- {"name":"Cloud Infrastructure Management","description":"Proficiency with cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud, including infrastructure-as-code practices, containerization with Docker/Kubernetes, and serverless architectures."}
- {"name":"Agile and Lean Methodologies","description":"Experience with Agile development practices, sprint planning, capacity planning, and Lean principles for continuous improvement and waste elimination in software delivery."}
- {"name":"Mentorship and Technical Growth","description":"Track record of mentoring junior engineers, conducting effective code reviews, and establishing technical interview practices. Experience creating learning opportunities and establishing engineering standards and best practices."}

## Tech stack

### tools

- {"name":"Kubernetes","description":"Container orchestration platform for managing and scaling microservices in production environments"}
- {"name":"Jenkins or GitLab CI","description":"CI/CD pipeline tools for automating testing, building, and deployment processes"}
- {"name":"Datadog or Prometheus","description":"Observability and monitoring platforms for tracking system health, performance metrics, and identifying anomalies"}
- {"name":"Grafana","description":"Visualization platform for dashboards and alerting on system metrics and operational KPIs"}
- {"name":"PagerDuty or On-Call Management","description":"Incident management and on-call scheduling tools for operational response and alerting"}
- {"name":"GitHub or GitLab","description":"Version control and code collaboration platforms with integrated CI/CD capabilities"}
- {"name":"Jira or Linear","description":"Project management and issue tracking tools for sprint planning, backlog management, and team coordination"}

### others

- {"name":"AI-Native Development Tools","description":"Emerging platforms and assistants for code generation, testing, and documentation such as GitHub Copilot, Claude for development, or similar AI-powered engineering tools"}
- {"name":"Infrastructure-as-Code","description":"Tools like Terraform, CloudFormation, or Pulumi for defining and managing cloud infrastructure programmatically"}
- {"name":"Load Testing and Performance","description":"Tools for simulating production load, identifying bottlenecks, and optimizing system performance under scale"}
- {"name":"Security and Compliance","description":"Understanding of secure coding practices, secrets management, encryption, and compliance requirements for cloud-based financial software"}

### databases

- {"name":"SQL Databases","description":"PostgreSQL or MySQL for transactional systems and accounting data, requiring strong consistency and ACID compliance"}
- {"name":"NoSQL Solutions","description":"Distributed databases like DynamoDB or similar for high-scale, eventual consistency requirements"}
- {"name":"Cache Layers","description":"Redis or Memcached for performance optimization and high-concurrency scenarios"}

### languages

- {"name":"Java","description":"Enterprise-grade language commonly used in large-scale distributed systems and backend services for cloud platforms"}
- {"name":"Python","description":"Versatile language used for backend services, scripting, data processing, and increasingly in AI-native development workflows"}
- {"name":"C# or Scala","description":"Alternative languages that may be used for specific components in modern distributed architectures"}

### frameworks

- {"name":"Spring or Spring Boot","description":"Popular enterprise framework for building scalable Java-based microservices and distributed systems"}
- {"name":"REST and gRPC APIs","description":"Standard approaches for service-to-service communication in distributed systems architecture"}
- {"name":"Message Queuing Systems","description":"Asynchronous messaging patterns using platforms like Kafka or RabbitMQ for event-driven architectures"}

## Benefits

### benefits

- {"name":"Great Place to Work Certification","description":"Xero is certified as a Great Place to Work UK, indicating strong workplace culture, employee satisfaction, and commitment to creating an inclusive work environment where diverse perspectives are valued."}
- {"name":"Flexible Work Arrangements","description":"Choice of remote, hybrid, or office-based roles with offices in London, Milton Keynes, and Manchester. Boost days available for connection and collaboration, balancing flexibility with team cohesion."}
- {"name":"Global Cloud Platform Scale","description":"Opportunity to work on systems serving millions of small business customers worldwide, gaining experience with high-scale distributed architecture and global platform operations."}
- {"name":"Modern Technology Stack","description":"Access to contemporary tools and frameworks for microservices, containerization, CI/CD automation, and AI-native development practices. Opportunity to influence technology decisions and drive modernization initiatives."}
- {"name":"Leadership and Career Development","description":"Clear pathway for engineering leadership growth with mentorship from senior technical leaders. Access to professional development opportunities, conferences, and training for continued skill advancement."}
- {"name":"Inclusive Team Culture","description":"Leadership role emphasizing psychological safety, blameless problem-solving, clear ownership, and high-trust team dynamics. Opportunity to shape team culture and create an environment where engineers thrive."}

## Compensation

- **max:** 180000
- **min:** 120000
- **currency:** GBP
- **stockOptions:** true

## Interview process

### steps

- {"name":"Initial Screening Call","description":"30-minute conversation with Xero recruiting team to discuss your background, motivation for the role, and alignment with Xero's values. This call confirms basic qualifications and cultural fit before moving forward in the process."}
- {"name":"Technical Leadership Conversation","description":"60-90 minute discussion with a senior engineering leader or CTO to evaluate technical depth, architectural thinking, and hands-on engineering credibility. Expect discussion of past technical decisions, system design challenges, and your approach to balancing velocity with quality."}
- {"name":"Engineering Management Case Study","description":"Scenario-based conversation exploring your approach to team leadership challenges such as hiring, performance management, technical debt prioritization, or incident response. Assess your communication skills, decision-making framework, and ability to influence without authority."}
- {"name":"Team and Culture Fit Interview","description":"Conversation with potential team members or peer managers to evaluate collaboration style, communication approach, and alignment with Xero's inclusive, high-trust team culture. Opportunity to ask questions about team dynamics and company culture."}
- {"name":"Leadership Vision Discussion","description":"Final conversation with hiring manager or director to discuss your vision for the team, technical roadmap priorities, and how you'll drive impact on Xero's engineering organization. Opportunity to ask strategic questions about company direction and role expectations."}

## Full description
**The role & impact**

As an Engineering Manager, you will drive the delivery of high-quality software by leading a high-performing inclusive team. You will act as the technical anchor, balancing predictable roadmap delivery with a relentless focus on team growth, technical excellence, and system health.

Your work requires a delicate balance between short-term product delivery velocity and long-term operational excellence. You will guide your team to hone their craft, champion AI-native workflows, and resolve complex technical challenges to deliver impactful outcomes that align with business and customer goals.

**The team & how they connect**

You will lead a results-driven team that operates with clear goals and ownership, fostering a high-trust environment where "blameless" problem-solving is the norm. The team works closely with Product and Design partners to shape solutions that truly matter to our customers.

**The team is currently working on**

* Modernising architectures and improving CI/CD maturity to reduce operational risk.
* Embedding AI-native engineering workflows across the SDLC to boost velocity and reduce toil.
* Refining system design and architecture for high-scale, high-availability distributed systems.
* Driving visibility into system health and technical debt to enable proactive improvements.

**Where and how you can work**

Xero is a Great Place to Work UK accredited company. We offer remote, hybrid or office based roles (hybrid and in-office in London, Milton Keynes or Manchester). Our offices offer boost days for connection and collaboration. 

**Here are some of the things we are looking for**

* Extensive professional software engineering experience, with a proven track record of technical maturity and delivering complex systems.
* Demonstrated experience leading, coaching, and performance-managing engineers, including building and improving team capability over time.
* Proven track record of translating business goals into executable engineering plans, balancing short-term delivery with long-term sustainability.
* Hands-on experience writing, reviewing, and debugging production code, with the technical credibility to guide engineering decisions.
* Experience building and supporting high-scale, high-availability distributed systems, including leading or overseeing incident response.
* Experience leading teams in the adoption of AI-native engineering workflows to improve developer productivity and quality.

Apply even if your experience isn't a perfect match! At Xero, we hire based on your skills, passion, and the unique perspective you can bring to enhance our culture and team.

Join a Great Place to Work-Certified™ company where your voice matters.