# Principal Engineer **Company:** [Xero](https://scaleengineer.com/companies/xero) Principal Engineer at Xero is a leadership role focused on guiding cross-functional engineering teams to deliver scalable, cloud-native solutions for small businesses. You will shape technical strategy across product groups, mentor senior engineers, and drive architectural excellence while balancing technical debt with product delivery. This role requires demonstrated expertise in large-scale systems, cloud platforms, CI/CD automation, and the ability to communicate technical vision to both engineering leaders and executive stakeholders. **Role:** Principal Engineer **Seniority:** Principal **Locations:** CAN: Vancouver (333 Seymour St) **Salary:** 227700–284600 CAD [Apply](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/xero/f5566a9d-09ca-4047-badf-b8382f34f822) Canonical: https://scaleengineer.com/jobs/xero/principal-engineer-f5566a9d --- ## Responsibilities - Guide Cross-Team Technical Strategy: Partner with senior leaders across multiple engineering teams within the product group to define and communicate group-wide technical strategy. Shape architectural direction to align with business objectives while fostering technical excellence and innovation. - Architect Scalable Cloud-Native Solutions: Design resilient, scalable software solutions leveraging modern cloud platforms and microservice architectures. Conduct architecture reviews, establish design patterns, and ensure solutions can evolve to meet growing business demands. - Define and Implement Technical Frameworks: Establish portfolio-wide technical frameworks, Service Level Objectives (SLOs), and strategies to quantify and systematically address technical debt. Create metrics and governance structures that enable teams to balance innovation with system stability. - Mentor Lead Engineers and Technical Talent: Provide strategic mentorship to lead engineers and senior individual contributors, fostering their growth as technical leaders. Build psychologically safe, inclusive team environments where open communication, continuous learning, and collaboration thrive. - Optimize CI/CD and Deployment Practices: Design and improve automated continuous integration and deployment pipelines, infrastructure automation, and deployment tooling. Establish quality standards and operational procedures that enable rapid, safe, and reliable software delivery. - Drive Legacy Modernization Initiatives: Lead refactoring and modernization efforts for legacy services, enhancing system scalability, performance, and security standards. Plan phased migrations from monolithic to microservice architectures while maintaining business continuity. - Simplify Complex Engineering Workflows: Identify friction points in engineering workflows and implement streamlined processes. Drive cross-team quality practices and engineering standards that reduce complexity and accelerate delivery without sacrificing rigor. - Establish Data-Driven Decision Culture: Guide teams in implementing observability, monitoring, and operational metrics. Use data-driven decision-making to inform architectural choices, identify system bottlenecks, and measure progress against technical goals. - Communicate Technical Vision to Stakeholders: Translate complex technical concepts for diverse audiences including engineering teams, product management, and executive leadership. Build alignment and secure buy-in for architectural initiatives and strategic technical investments. - Bridge Organizational Boundaries: Work across product management, architecture, operations, and delivery teams to align technical decisions with business needs. Foster collaboration and knowledge sharing through active communities of practice and technical forums. ## Requirements ### education - {"name":"Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or Related Field","description":"Formal education in computer science, software engineering, systems engineering, or related discipline. Equivalent professional experience may be considered."} ### technical - {"name":"Cloud-Native Architecture","description":"Extensive experience designing, architecting, and leading the delivery of large-scale cloud-native applications on modern cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP). Deep understanding of containerization, orchestration, serverless patterns, and cloud-native design principles."} - {"name":"CI/CD Pipeline Automation","description":"Advanced expertise in designing and implementing automated continuous integration and continuous deployment pipelines. Experience with infrastructure-as-code, configuration management, and delivery automation tooling."} - {"name":"Microservices Architecture","description":"Proven track record designing, implementing, and evolving microservice-based systems at scale. Understanding of service mesh, API design, inter-service communication patterns, and distributed system challenges."} - {"name":"Systems Performance and Scalability","description":"Deep expertise in optimizing system performance, identifying and resolving bottlenecks, and architecting solutions that scale horizontally. Experience with load testing, performance profiling, and capacity planning."} - {"name":"Security and Compliance Standards","description":"Strong background establishing and enforcing security practices, compliance frameworks, and operational security standards across distributed systems. Experience with threat modeling, secure architecture, and security testing."} - {"name":"Technical Debt Management","description":"Demonstrated ability to quantify, strategize, and systematically address technical debt. Experience defining frameworks, metrics, and refactoring strategies while maintaining product delivery velocity."} ### experience - {"name":"10+ Years of Software Engineering Experience","description":"Substantial experience designing and delivering large-scale software systems, with demonstrated progression through mid-level and senior engineering roles."} - {"name":"5+ Years in Leadership and Mentorship","description":"Proven track record mentoring engineers at multiple levels, fostering psychological safety, and developing inclusive team cultures. Experience influencing technical direction across team and organizational boundaries."} - {"name":"Large-Scale Systems Delivery","description":"Direct experience guiding complex, multi-team projects to successful delivery. Demonstrated ability to manage technical complexity, organizational dynamics, and stakeholder alignment."} - {"name":"Cross-Functional Collaboration","description":"Extensive experience working effectively with product management, architecture, operations, and executive leadership. Ability to translate between technical and business contexts."} ## Skills ### required - {"name":"Strategic Technical Leadership","description":"Ability to define and communicate long-term technical vision while making pragmatic trade-offs between innovation, technical debt, and product delivery. Experience balancing architectural ideals with business realities."} - {"name":"Architectural Design and Strategy","description":"Expertise in designing scalable, resilient system architectures that evolve with business needs. Skilled at conducting design reviews, establishing architectural standards, and defining portfolio-wide technical frameworks."} - {"name":"Legacy System Modernization","description":"Proven experience refactoring and modernizing legacy services while maintaining system stability and business continuity. Ability to plan phased migrations and incrementally improve older codebases."} - {"name":"SLO and Operational Metrics Definition","description":"Experience establishing Service Level Objectives, defining operational metrics, and implementing observability strategies. Skilled at using data to drive architectural and operational decisions."} - {"name":"Team Mentorship and Development","description":"Demonstrated ability to mentor lead engineers and senior individual contributors. Creating psychological safety, fostering growth mindsets, and building inclusive teams where diverse perspectives are valued."} - {"name":"Technical Communication","description":"Exceptional ability to explain complex technical concepts clearly to diverse audiences including individual contributors, executive leaders, and non-technical stakeholders. Skilled at storytelling and building alignment."} - {"name":"Quality and Delivery Standards","description":"Experience establishing engineering quality practices, code review standards, testing frameworks, and deployment procedures. Ability to simplify complex engineering workflows and create sustainable development practices."} - {"name":"Data-Driven Decision Making","description":"Strong analytical skills using metrics, observability data, and evidence-based reasoning to guide architectural decisions, identify system improvements, and prioritize technical work."} ### preferred - {"name":"SaaS and Platform Engineering","description":"Prior experience building or operating SaaS platforms serving thousands or millions of users. Understanding of platform-as-a-product concepts and developer experience optimization."} - {"name":"Financial Services or Accounting Software","description":"Background in fintech, accounting software, or regulated financial systems. Understanding of compliance requirements, audit trails, and financial data integrity."} - {"name":"Open Source Contribution","description":"History of contributing to or maintaining open source projects. Demonstrated engagement with engineering communities and collaborative development practices."} - {"name":"Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)","description":"Experience with SRE principles, incident management, chaos engineering, and building resilient systems. Understanding of observability, monitoring, and operational excellence."} - {"name":"DevOps and Infrastructure Automation","description":"Hands-on experience with infrastructure-as-code, container orchestration platforms, and infrastructure automation. Familiarity with Kubernetes, Terraform, or similar technologies."} - {"name":"Organizational and Systems Thinking","description":"Understanding of organizational dynamics, communication patterns, and how technical decisions impact team structure and effectiveness. Familiarity with Conway's Law and inverse Conway maneuvers."} ## Tech stack ### tools - {"name":"Docker and Container Runtimes","description":"Mastery of containerization technologies for packaging, deploying, and managing microservices in consistent environments."} - {"name":"Kubernetes","description":"Expert-level experience orchestrating containerized applications at scale, managing cluster configuration, networking, storage, and security."} - {"name":"Infrastructure-as-Code","description":"Proficiency with IaC tools like Terraform, CloudFormation, or Pulumi for automating infrastructure provisioning and managing cloud resources programmatically."} - {"name":"CI/CD Platforms","description":"Deep experience with continuous integration and deployment platforms such as Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, or cloud-native options like AWS CodePipeline."} - {"name":"Observability and Monitoring","description":"Expertise with observability platforms (Datadog, New Relic, Prometheus, ELK Stack) for distributed tracing, metrics collection, logging, and performance analysis."} - {"name":"Version Control and Collaboration","description":"Advanced Git workflows, branching strategies, and collaboration tools. Experience with pull request review processes and trunk-based development practices."} - {"name":"Issue Tracking and Project Management","description":"Familiarity with agile project management tools and issue tracking systems for organizing technical work and cross-team coordination."} ### others - {"name":"Cloud Platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP)","description":"Deep hands-on experience with major public cloud providers. Expertise in architecting for cloud platforms including managed services, serverless, and cost optimization."} - {"name":"Security and Compliance Frameworks","description":"Understanding of security best practices, compliance frameworks (SOC2, GDPR, HIPAA), and secure architecture principles for handling sensitive financial data."} - {"name":"Service Mesh Technologies","description":"Experience with service mesh platforms like Istio or Linkerd for managing service-to-service communication, traffic management, and security in microservice environments."} - {"name":"API Gateway and Load Balancing","description":"Knowledge of API gateway architectures, rate limiting, routing strategies, and load balancing for managing traffic across distributed services."} ### databases - {"name":"PostgreSQL","description":"Enterprise-grade relational database offering ACID compliance, strong consistency, and advanced features for financial systems and transactional workloads."} - {"name":"MySQL","description":"Widely deployed relational database for scalable web applications and backend systems at organizations of scale."} - {"name":"Cloud Data Warehouses","description":"Experience with modern data warehouse solutions like BigQuery, Snowflake, or Redshift for analytics, reporting, and data-driven decision making."} - {"name":"NoSQL and Cache Stores","description":"Understanding of non-relational databases, caching layers (Redis, Memcached), and when to apply non-relational data models in distributed systems."} ### languages - {"name":"Python","description":"Widely used across Xero's platform for backend services and automation tooling. Experience preferred but not required for architectural roles."} - {"name":"Java","description":"Enterprise-scale language commonly used in core financial services and backend systems requiring high performance and reliability."} - {"name":"TypeScript/JavaScript","description":"Used in modern web applications and microservices. Understanding of JavaScript ecosystems valuable for full-stack architectural decisions."} - {"name":"Go","description":"Increasingly popular for cloud infrastructure, microservices, and DevOps tooling. Strong choice for high-performance, concurrent systems."} ### frameworks - {"name":"Microservices Architecture Patterns","description":"Deep understanding of microservice design patterns including API gateways, service mesh, distributed tracing, and event-driven architectures."} - {"name":"Cloud-Native Frameworks","description":"Experience with cloud-native application development, containerization strategies, and frameworks designed for distributed systems and horizontal scaling."} - {"name":"Event-Driven Architectures","description":"Expertise in event streaming, message brokers, and event-driven design patterns for building loosely coupled, scalable systems."} - {"name":"API Design and GraphQL","description":"Strong understanding of RESTful API design principles and emerging API technologies like GraphQL for efficient data access in microservice ecosystems."} ## Benefits ### benefits - {"name":"Annual Bonus Program","description":"Permanent employees participate in performance-based annual bonus programs aligned with company and individual goal achievement."} - {"name":"Equity Compensation (RSU)","description":"Restricted stock units (RSU) program available to eligible roles, with additional performance-based equity incentives depending on role level and company performance."} - {"name":"Health and Wellness Programs","description":"Comprehensive health coverage and world-class wellness initiatives supporting physical, mental, and holistic wellbeing."} - {"name":"Retirement Programs","description":"Competitive retirement savings plans and employer matching to support long-term financial security."} - {"name":"Wellbeing Days","description":"Dedicated paid time off specifically allocated for personal wellbeing, mental health, and life balance."} - {"name":"Generous Leave Policy","description":"Flexible and generous leave arrangements including annual vacation, personal days, and family care provisions."} - {"name":"Professional Development Budget","description":"Dedicated annual budget for training, certifications, conferences, and continuous learning opportunities to support career growth."} ## Compensation - **max:** 284600 - **min:** 227700 - **currency:** CAD - **stockOptions:** true ## Interview process ### steps ## Full description **The role & impact** You will work in collaboration with multiple engineering teams across the product group to guide, inspire, and elevate technical excellence. Shaping group-wide technical strategy, you will bridge organizational boundaries and partner with senior leaders to turn complex requirements into scalable, resilient software solutions. Through data-driven decision-making, you will guide architectural direction, elevate engineering practices, and mentor technical talent. Your focus will be on solving large-scale systems challenges while enabling teams to deliver value to small businesses safely, securely, and swiftly. **The team & how they connect** You will join a cross-functional engineering collective made up of product management, architecture, and core delivery teams. Together, the group collaborates to build robust cloud-native applications, sharing knowledge through active communities of practice. The team works in a supportive, high-trust environment where open communication, continuous learning, and continuous improvement drive day-to-day work. **Initially, the role will focus on** * Modern cloud platforms, automated CI/CD pipelines, and microservice architectures * Refactoring legacy services and enhancing system scalability, performance, and security standards * Defining portfolio-wide technical frameworks, SLOs, and strategies to quantify and address technical debt * Mentoring lead engineers and driving cross-team quality practices to simplify complex engineering workflows **Where and how you can work** We offer a flexible, hybrid working style that balances working from home with intentional in-person collaboration. You will have access to our modern, vibrant office spaces to connect with colleagues during key team moments and boost days, while having the flexibility to structure your work in a way that supports your productivity and personal balance. **Here are some of the things we are looking for** * Demonstrated leadership in guiding large-scale cloud native software projects to successful delivery * Proven success mentoring engineers and fostering inclusive, psychologically safe team environments * Strong ability to shape long-term architectural vision while effectively balancing technical debt with product delivery * Expertise in automating delivery tooling, establishing quality standards, and refining operational metrics * Skilled at communicating nuanced technical concepts clearly to both technical teams and executive leaders **Compensation & Total Rewards** At Xero, we value the impact and skills you bring to the team. We believe in a Total Package philosophy - ensuring your value is recognized through a holistic lens that includes base salary, performance incentives, and world-class benefits. The expected base salary range for this role is $227,700 - $284,600 CAD. Individual pay is determined by various factors, including geography, level of experience, and the specific skills you bring to the role. In addition to base pay, Xero’s roles are eligible for the following forms of variable compensation: * **Variable Pay:** Permanent employees are eligible to participate in our annual bonus and equity (RSU) programs. You may also be eligible for performance-based cash or equity (RSUs) incentives depending on your role level, and company performance. * **Comprehensive Benefits:** World-class health, wellness, and retirement programs. [**Xero Perks**](https://careers.xero.com/inside-xero/benefits-wellbeing/) including Wellbeing days, generous leave, and dedicated professional development budgets. This is a posting for an existing vacancy. 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. 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.