# Lead Engineer - Payments Platform **Company:** [Xero](https://scaleengineer.com/companies/xero) Lead Engineer for Xero's Payments Platform, responsible for architecting and building highly available, distributed backend systems that power money movement capabilities for millions of small business subscribers globally. You will guide technical design decisions, contribute directly to production code, and mentor engineers on resilient, scalable, and secure financial technology solutions in an early-stage, high-impact initiative. **Role:** Lead Engineer **Seniority:** Lead **Locations:** CAN: Vancouver (333 Seymour St) **Salary:** 186000–236000 CAD [Apply](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/xero/4610d7b3-d178-4a7e-8cb0-f90507e92442) Canonical: https://scaleengineer.com/jobs/xero/lead-engineer-payments-platform-4610d7b3 --- ## Responsibilities - Architect & Design Payment Platform Services: Design and build core payment platform capabilities including orchestration services, fraud detection and risk management systems, multi-provider payment routing, and high-throughput transaction processing to support global payment products while maintaining operational excellence and system reliability. - Lead Global Bill Payment Product Development: Spearhead the development of a global bill payment product that enables small businesses to streamline cash flow management, collaborating with product and design teams to translate business requirements into resilient, scalable engineering solutions. - Develop High-Throughput Core Services: Build and optimize core platform services capable of handling massive transaction volumes reliably and performantly, ensuring systems maintain sub-millisecond latency and 99.99%+ uptime for critical financial operations. - Champion AI Integration & Developer Productivity: Advocate for and integrate advanced AI capabilities across engineering workflows to accelerate development velocity, improve code quality, and enhance developer productivity through modern AI-assisted tools and practices. - Provide Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Set technical direction for the Payments Platform team, mentor senior engineers, foster an inclusive engineering culture, and establish best practices for distributed systems design, API architecture, and financial technology security standards. - Drive Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner closely with Product, Design, Security, Risk, and Operations teams to translate complex business needs and regulatory requirements into resilient engineering solutions that support millions of small business subscribers. - Contribute to Production Code & Proof-of-Concepts: Maintain hands-on involvement in production codebase development and technical proof-of-concepts, solving complex fintech challenges at scale while modeling technical excellence and best practices for the engineering team. - Solve Complex Financial Technology Challenges: Address sophisticated distributed systems problems related to payment processing, fraud prevention, compliance, and operational resilience while making foundational architectural decisions that shape the future of Xero's payments capabilities. ## Requirements ### education - {"name":"Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or Related Field","description":"Formal education in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Mathematics, or equivalent field demonstrating foundational computer science principles and theoretical knowledge."} - {"name":"Continuous Professional Development","description":"Commitment to staying current with distributed systems research, backend architecture patterns, and emerging financial technology trends through technical reading, courses, or community involvement."} ### technical - {"name":"Distributed Backend Systems Architecture","description":"Proven expertise in designing, architecting, and deploying highly available, scalable distributed systems with deep understanding of consistency models, failure scenarios, and resilience patterns for production environments at scale."} - {"name":"High-Throughput Service Development","description":"Demonstrated experience building and optimizing high-throughput services capable of processing millions of transactions reliably, with expertise in performance optimization, latency reduction, and handling real-world production constraints."} - {"name":"System Architecture & API Design","description":"Deep understanding of system architecture principles including microservices patterns, API design best practices (REST, gRPC), event-driven architectures, and distributed systems patterns relevant to financial technology platforms."} - {"name":"SQL & NoSQL Database Expertise","description":"Advanced proficiency with both relational databases (SQL) for transactional integrity and NoSQL databases (key-value stores, document databases) for scaling, including optimization, indexing strategies, and choosing appropriate persistence patterns."} - {"name":"Backend Programming Languages","description":"Proficiency in modern backend stacks including C#, Java, Golang, or C++, with ability to write performant, maintainable production code and make technology choices appropriate for payment platform requirements."} - {"name":"Cloud-Native Platforms (AWS)","description":"Strong hands-on experience with AWS cloud services including EC2, RDS, DynamoDB, Lambda, SQS, SNS, and related services; expertise in cloud-native architecture patterns, infrastructure-as-code, and container orchestration."} - {"name":"Payment Systems & Financial Technology","description":"Understanding of payment processing flows, fraud detection mechanisms, compliance requirements (PCI-DSS, regulations), and financial transaction integrity principles or demonstrated ability to rapidly acquire this domain knowledge."} - {"name":"Modern Development Practices & AI Tools","description":"Proficiency with Git version control, CI/CD pipelines, containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), and demonstrated advanced usage of AI-assisted development tools to accelerate coding velocity and workflow efficiency."} ### experience - {"name":"Senior Backend Engineering Leadership","description":"5+ years of experience in senior/staff-level backend engineering roles with proven track record delivering highly available, distributed systems at scale; experience architecting and owning critical infrastructure components."} - {"name":"Financial Technology or Payments Industry","description":"Experience working on payment platforms, fintech infrastructure, or financial services systems is highly valuable; comfort with regulatory requirements, security standards, and financial transaction integrity expectations."} - {"name":"Cross-Functional Technical Leadership","description":"Demonstrated success partnering with Product, Design, and Operations teams; experience translating business requirements into technical solutions and driving alignment across functional teams on technical direction."} - {"name":"Mentorship & Team Development","description":"Track record of mentoring senior engineers, establishing engineering best practices, fostering inclusive team culture, and developing other engineers' technical capabilities and career growth."} - {"name":"Problem Decomposition & Agile Execution","description":"Strong ability to break down complex technical problems into clear, actionable solutions and drive agile execution to deliver results on schedule while maintaining quality standards."} ## Skills ### required - {"name":"Distributed Systems Design","description":"Expert-level capability in designing fault-tolerant, scalable distributed systems with understanding of CAP theorem, consensus algorithms, and eventual consistency patterns."} - {"name":"Backend Development (C#, Java, Golang, or C++)","description":"Production-grade proficiency in at least one of C#, Java, Golang, or C++ for building performant backend services and solving complex algorithmic challenges."} - {"name":"SQL Database Architecture","description":"Advanced SQL proficiency including schema design, query optimization, indexing strategies, and transaction management for high-throughput transactional systems."} - {"name":"NoSQL Database Design","description":"Expertise with NoSQL databases (DynamoDB, MongoDB, Cassandra, or similar) including data modeling, scaling strategies, and choosing appropriate persistence solutions for specific use cases."} - {"name":"AWS Cloud Services","description":"Hands-on expertise with AWS services for building production systems including compute, database, messaging, and monitoring services; infrastructure-as-code practices."} - {"name":"Microservices Architecture","description":"Deep understanding of microservices patterns, service discovery, inter-service communication, API design, and operational considerations for managing distributed microservices platforms."} - {"name":"Technical Leadership & Communication","description":"Ability to articulate complex technical concepts clearly, make architectural decisions with business context, and drive alignment across engineering and non-technical stakeholders."} - {"name":"Security & Compliance Mindset","description":"Security-first development approach including secure coding practices, cryptography fundamentals, and awareness of compliance requirements relevant to financial technology systems."} ### preferred - {"name":"Payment Systems Experience","description":"Prior experience with payment processing platforms, payment orchestration, or fintech infrastructure gives significant advantage in understanding domain-specific challenges and solutions."} - {"name":"Fraud Detection & Risk Management","description":"Experience building or working with fraud detection systems, risk scoring algorithms, or financial crime prevention mechanisms is valuable for this payments platform role."} - {"name":"High-Frequency Trading or Real-Time Systems","description":"Background in ultra-low latency systems, real-time data processing, or high-frequency environments demonstrates capability for optimizing performance-critical payment services."} - {"name":"Multi-Provider Integration","description":"Experience integrating with multiple external payment providers, APIs, or third-party services demonstrates systems thinking for managing complexity in multi-vendor environments."} - {"name":"Event-Driven & Streaming Architectures","description":"Proficiency with event streaming platforms (Kafka, AWS Kinesis) and event-driven architectural patterns for building responsive, scalable systems with strong separation of concerns."} - {"name":"AI/ML Integration","description":"Demonstrated integration of AI/ML capabilities into production systems and advanced usage of AI-assisted development tools (GitHub Copilot, Claude, etc.) to enhance developer productivity."} - {"name":"Open Source Contributions","description":"Active contributions to open source backend infrastructure projects (distributed systems, databases, APIs) demonstrates passion for technical excellence and community engagement."} - {"name":"Observability & Monitoring","description":"Advanced expertise in building observability into systems through logging, metrics, tracing, and debugging distributed systems in production for rapid incident response."} ## Tech stack ### tools - {"name":"AWS (EC2, RDS, Lambda, SQS, SNS, CloudWatch)","description":"Amazon Web Services cloud platform for compute, databases, messaging, and monitoring; foundational infrastructure for scalable payment platform deployment."} - {"name":"Docker & Kubernetes","description":"Container orchestration and management for deploying microservices, managing multi-region deployments, and ensuring consistent environments across development and production."} - {"name":"Git & GitHub/GitLab","description":"Version control systems for managing codebase, code review processes, and collaborative development workflows across distributed engineering teams."} - {"name":"CI/CD Pipelines (GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Jenkins)","description":"Continuous integration and deployment automation for rapid, safe shipping of changes with automated testing, security scanning, and deployment orchestration."} - {"name":"Terraform / Infrastructure-as-Code","description":"Infrastructure automation and provisioning tools for managing AWS resources, environment consistency, and repeatable deployment processes."} - {"name":"Datadog / New Relic / Prometheus","description":"Application performance monitoring and observability platforms for real-time metrics, distributed tracing, and rapid incident investigation in production systems."} ### others - {"name":"AI-Assisted Development Tools (GitHub Copilot, Claude, ChatGPT)","description":"Modern AI coding assistants for accelerating development velocity, code generation, and workflow efficiency; comfort level with AI in software development workflows."} - {"name":"API Design & REST/gRPC Protocols","description":"Expertise in designing clean, scalable APIs following REST conventions or gRPC patterns for microservices communication and external integration."} - {"name":"Security & Cryptography Fundamentals","description":"Understanding of encryption, authentication protocols (OAuth2, JWT), TLS/SSL, and secure coding practices essential for payment systems and financial data protection."} - {"name":"PCI-DSS & Financial Compliance","description":"Familiarity with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, KYC/AML compliance, and regulatory requirements for financial technology platforms."} ### databases - {"name":"PostgreSQL / MySQL","description":"Relational SQL databases for transactional payment data with ACID guarantees, complex querying, and strong consistency required for financial operations."} - {"name":"Amazon DynamoDB","description":"Fully managed NoSQL database service on AWS for high-throughput, low-latency access patterns with horizontal scaling and global replication capabilities."} - {"name":"MongoDB","description":"Document-oriented NoSQL database for flexible schema requirements, horizontal scaling, and complex document storage for payment metadata and audit logs."} - {"name":"Redis / Memcached","description":"In-memory caching and data stores for reducing latency, session management, and real-time data access patterns in high-throughput payment systems."} ### languages - {"name":"C#","description":"Primary backend language option for building scalable payment services on .NET framework with strong typing and performance characteristics."} - {"name":"Java","description":"Enterprise backend language option for distributed systems with mature ecosystem of libraries, frameworks, and deployment tools for high-throughput services."} - {"name":"Golang","description":"Modern systems programming language optimized for concurrency, cloud-native deployments, and microservices with excellent performance and goroutine scalability."} - {"name":"C++","description":"High-performance systems language option for ultra-low latency components and performance-critical payment processing logic requiring fine-grained control."} ### frameworks - {"name":".NET/ASP.NET Core","description":"Cloud-native framework for building high-performance web services and APIs on the C# platform with excellent async/await support and cloud integration."} - {"name":"Spring Framework / Spring Boot","description":"Java enterprise framework for rapidly building microservices, APIs, and distributed systems with strong dependency injection and cloud-native deployment support."} - {"name":"gRPC","description":"High-performance RPC framework for inter-service communication with HTTP/2 protocol, strong typing, and excellent performance for microservices architecture."} - {"name":"Apache Kafka / AWS Kinesis","description":"Event streaming platforms for building event-driven architectures and real-time data pipelines supporting payment event processing and audit trails."} ## Benefits ### benefits ## Compensation - **max:** 236000 - **min:** 186000 - **currency:** CAD - **stockOptions:** true ## Interview process ### steps ## Full description **The role / impact** In this role, you will help shape the technical foundation for money movement capabilities while unlocking new product lines globally. You will guide the design and development of reliable, scalable, performant, and secure services for the platform, ensuring operational excellence and direct business outcomes. This is a rare chance to join an early-stage initiative, make foundational architectural decisions, and have a visible impact on the future of small businesses. By contributing directly to production code and proof-of-concepts, you will solve complex financial technology challenges at a massive scale. **The team / how they connect** The Payments Platform team is the engine powering money movement across the entire ecosystem, collaborating closely with product, security, risk, and operations. We are a highly collaborative collective that values technical excellence, inclusion, and continuous innovation. Together, we work cross-functionally to translate complex business needs into resilient engineering solutions that support millions of subscribers. **The team is currently working on / Initially, you will focus on** * Designing and building out payment platform capabilities, such as orchestration, risks & fraud, multi-providers, to accelerate various payment products development and improve operational posture * Building out a global bill payment product to streamline how small businesses manage their cash flow * Developing core high-throughput platform services * Integrating and championing artificial intelligence capabilities to accelerate engineering productivity and enhance developer workflows **Where and how you can work** **This role is based onsite our Vancouver office, where we embrace a hybrid working model, 1-2 days in office a week.** You will have the flexibility to work from home while joining the team in the office for "boost days" to collaborate, socialise, and solve complex problems in person. **We are open to ON or AB applicants who may be willing to relocate and Seattle Area, Washington US applicants (remotely).** **Here are some of the things we are looking for** * You bring a proven track record of delivering highly available, distributed backend systems and designing high-throughput services under real-world constraints * A deep understanding of system architecture, API design, and both SQL and NoSQL databases is essential * Your background includes proficiency in modern backend stacks such as C#, Java, Golang, or C++, alongside cloud-native platforms like AWS * You are passionate about staying hands-on contributing directly to production code, proof-of-concepts, and technical deep dives. * You possess strong leadership capabilities, with a passion for setting technical direction, mentoring engineers, and fostering an inclusive culture * You demonstrate strong ability in breaking down complex problems into clear, actionable solutions while driving agile execution to deliver results. * You are a strong partner to Product, Design, and other cross-functional teams to translate complex business needs into resilient engineering solutions. * You are a champion of advanced usage in AI tools and practices across the team to accelerate development workflows. 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. We are also tech stack agnostic, so please apply if you've worked with adjacent technologies. **Compensation Philosophy** At Xero, we value the impact and skills you bring to the team. We don’t just hire for a role; we invest in people. We believe in a **Total Package** philosophy - which means your value isn't just a single number on a paycheck. While base salary is a core component, we look at your compensation through a holistic lens that includes equity, performance incentives, and world-class benefits. The base salary range for this role in Canada is $186,000 - $236,000 CAD. Please note that this range represents base salary only. We believe in rewarding our people for their total contribution, which is why we look at compensation through a holistic lens. In addition to base pay, your total package may include: * **Variable Pay:** Eligibility commissions or equity based on role and performance. * **Comprehensive Benefits:** World-class health, wellness, and retirement programs. * **Xero Perks:** [Inside Xero](https://careers.xero.com/inside-xero/benefits-wellbeing/) Explore our full suite of benefits, from wellbeing initiatives to professional development. _Individual pay is determined by various factors, including geography, level of experience, and the specific skills you bring to the role._ Xero uses AI to help screen applications based on job-related qualifications. These tools assist our recruiters but do not make automated hiring decisions. A human recruiter reviews all candidates before any hiring action is taken.