Senior Engineer
Senior · Full Time
Opens Xero's application page
Role
What you'll do.
As a Senior Engineer at Xero, you will design and implement scalable distributed systems while mentoring engineering teams. This role requires expertise in modern cloud architectures, test-driven development, and CI/CD practices, with the opportunity to influence technical strategy across a global accounting software platform serving millions of small businesses worldwide.
Responsibilities
- Design and Implement Distributed Systems Architecture: Take ownership of major code design decisions and lead the refactoring of monolithic architectures into scalable, modern distributed systems. Contribute directly to system design documents, architecture reviews, and ensure implementation meets both functional requirements and performance benchmarks for handling platform-wide scale.
- Establish and Enforce Engineering Standards: Define and communicate technical standards across the engineering organization, including coding patterns, design principles, and best practices. Conduct architecture reviews and technical assessments to ensure consistency, maintainability, and alignment with platform goals.
- Lead Mentorship and Technical Growth: Act as a mentor and role model for junior and mid-level engineers, providing guidance on complex technical challenges, career development, and engineering excellence. Facilitate knowledge sharing through pair programming, technical discussions, and constructive code reviews that elevate team capabilities.
- Optimize Deployment and Testing Infrastructure: Drive improvements to CI/CD pipelines and automated testing frameworks, reducing deployment lead times and increasing system reliability. Implement test-driven development practices and establish comprehensive testing strategies to ensure high code quality and confidence in releases.
- Collaborate Across Functional Teams: Partner closely with product, design, and operations teams to ensure technical solutions align with broader product vision and organizational goals. Communicate architectural decisions clearly to stakeholders and translate business requirements into robust technical implementations.
- Contribute to Technology Stack Evolution: Actively participate in evaluating, selecting, and implementing modern technologies within the AWS, C#, React, and Kubernetes ecosystem. Lead technical spikes and proof-of-concepts to assess new frameworks and tools that enhance developer productivity and system performance.
Qualifications
What we look for.
Technical
Distributed Systems Design
Deep expertise in designing, implementing, and operating distributed systems at scale. Experience with microservices architecture, service communication patterns, eventual consistency models, and distributed transaction handling. Understanding of scalability challenges and trade-offs inherent in distributed architectures.
Cloud Platform Proficiency
Strong hands-on experience with AWS services including EC2, RDS, S3, Lambda, SQS, and ECS/EKS. Ability to design cloud-native architectures, optimize cloud costs, and leverage managed services for operational efficiency. Understanding of cloud security, networking, and infrastructure-as-code practices.
Container Orchestration and Kubernetes
Proficient with Kubernetes for container orchestration, including cluster management, deployment strategies, networking, storage, and monitoring. Experience deploying, scaling, and troubleshooting containerized applications in production environments. Knowledge of Helm, service meshes, or other Kubernetes ecosystem tools is valuable.
Test-Driven Development and Quality Assurance
Demonstrated expertise in test-driven development (TDD) principles and comprehensive testing strategies including unit, integration, and end-to-end testing. Experience establishing testing frameworks, improving code coverage metrics, and balancing testing investment with delivery velocity.
CI/CD Pipeline Design and Implementation
Hands-on experience building, optimizing, and maintaining continuous integration and continuous deployment pipelines. Proficiency with tools like Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, or similar platforms. Understanding of deployment strategies, rollback procedures, and monitoring-driven deployments.
Full-Stack Web Development
Solid full-stack capabilities spanning backend and frontend development. Backend experience with C# and ASP.NET ecosystem, frontend proficiency with React, and understanding of database design and optimization. Ability to architect end-to-end features and guide junior developers across the stack.
Education
Computer Science or Related Field
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent practical experience demonstrating comparable technical depth and problem-solving capability. Equivalent demonstrated expertise through significant open-source contributions or self-directed technical advancement is valued.
Experience
Distributed Systems Implementation
Minimum 5-7 years of hands-on experience building and operating distributed systems in production environments. Proven track record of refactoring or migrating monolithic systems to microservices architectures and managing associated complexity at scale.
Senior Engineering Leadership
Demonstrated progression to senior-level responsibilities including ownership of major technical initiatives, architectural decisions, and mentorship of junior engineers. Evidence of technical leadership through design documentation, architecture reviews, or leading cross-functional technical projects.
Cloud and Container Technologies
Substantive experience with AWS and Kubernetes in production settings, including deployment, monitoring, and troubleshooting. Experience managing containerized applications and cloud infrastructure reliability, cost optimization, and security.
Agile and Collaborative Development
Proven ability to thrive in agile environments with regular standups, sprint planning, and retrospectives. Strong experience engaging in pair programming, code reviews, and cross-functional collaboration. History of mentoring, code quality advocacy, and elevating team technical standards.
Skills
Required
C# and ASP.NET
Production-level proficiency with C# for backend systems development. Strong understanding of ASP.NET Core for building RESTful APIs, middleware patterns, and enterprise application architecture.
React and Modern Frontend Development
Proficient with React for building scalable user interfaces. Experience with component architecture, state management patterns, testing frameworks, and performance optimization in frontend applications.
AWS Services and Cloud Architecture
Hands-on expertise with core AWS services (EC2, RDS, S3, Lambda, SQS, ECS/EKS). Ability to design fault-tolerant, scalable cloud architectures and optimize for cost and performance.
Kubernetes and Container Orchestration
Strong Kubernetes experience including cluster management, pod deployment, networking, storage, and monitoring. Ability to troubleshoot containerized applications and optimize cluster resource utilization.
Relational and Non-Relational Databases
Solid understanding of SQL database design, indexing, and query optimization. Familiarity with NoSQL alternatives and ability to select appropriate data storage technologies based on access patterns and scalability requirements.
CI/CD and Deployment Automation
Hands-on experience implementing and optimizing CI/CD pipelines. Proficiency with modern DevOps tooling and ability to establish automated testing, building, and deployment workflows.
Test-Driven Development and Testing Frameworks
Demonstrated expertise with TDD methodologies and testing frameworks appropriate to backend and frontend environments. Ability to design comprehensive testing strategies and establish quality gates.
Architectural Design and System Design
Advanced capability in designing complex system architectures, making trade-off decisions, and communicating designs to technical and non-technical stakeholders. Experience with design patterns and principles applicable to scalable systems.
Preferred
Software Architecture and Design Patterns
Nice to haveDeep knowledge of architectural patterns such as CQRS, event sourcing, saga pattern, and domain-driven design principles. Experience evaluating and implementing patterns that improve system maintainability and scalability.
API Design and GraphQL
Nice to haveExperience designing RESTful APIs or GraphQL endpoints with careful attention to versioning, backward compatibility, and developer experience. Understanding of API gateway patterns and API security.
Message Queuing and Event-Driven Architecture
Nice to haveHands-on experience with message brokers such as RabbitMQ, Apache Kafka, or AWS SQS for building event-driven systems. Understanding of event streaming, event sourcing, and asynchronous communication patterns.
Observability and Monitoring
Nice to haveExperience implementing comprehensive monitoring, logging, and tracing solutions in distributed systems. Familiarity with tools like Datadog, New Relic, ELK stack, or Prometheus for maintaining visibility into production systems.
Security and Compliance
Nice to haveUnderstanding of cloud security best practices, API authentication and authorization mechanisms, and compliance considerations relevant to financial software. Experience implementing security controls and threat modeling.
Performance Optimization and Scalability
Nice to haveTrack record of identifying and resolving performance bottlenecks in large-scale systems. Experience with load testing, profiling, caching strategies, and database query optimization.
Open Source Contribution and Community Engagement
Nice to haveActive involvement in open source projects, technical blogging, speaking engagements, or community contributions that demonstrate thought leadership and commitment to engineering excellence.
Tech stack
Languages
Frameworks
Databases
Tools
Other
Compensation
Pay and benefits.
Base·NZD 130,000 – 180,000
Benefits
Flexible Work Arrangements
Hybrid working options tailored to team needs, with flexibility to work from home and office-based collaborative boost days. Remote arrangements available depending on location, enabling work-life balance and reduced commute time.
Technical Leadership Opportunity
Play a key role in shaping Xero's technical platform and architecture decisions. Influence the evolution of the tech stack and contribute directly to engineering standards that guide the organization.
Mentorship and Team Growth
Act as a mentor and role model, helping junior engineers develop their technical capabilities and career progression. Build strong technical teams and foster a culture of continuous learning.
Meaningful Impact on Scale
Work on distributed systems serving millions of small businesses globally. Contribute to refactoring complex systems that power Xero's accounting platform and improve user experience worldwide.
Modern Technology Stack
Work with cutting-edge technologies including AWS, Kubernetes, C#, React, and modern DevOps practices. Continuous opportunity to learn and evolve alongside emerging industry best practices.
Collaborative Engineering Culture
Join a team that values technical excellence, open collaboration, and continuous learning. Engage in pair programming, thoughtful code reviews, and cross-functional partnerships to drive quality outcomes.
Career Progression
Clear path to advance within Xero's engineering organization with opportunities to transition into staff engineer, principal engineer, or engineering leadership roles.
Full posting
Original listing.
The role, your impact
As a Senior Engineer, you will tackle engineering problems at scale and play a key role in the architecture and implementation of distributed systems. You will contribute directly to refactoring complex systems to ensure we continue delivering high-quality, scalable software solutions that make a real difference for our users.
In this position, you will own major code design decisions, contribute to overall engineering standards, and help shape the future of our technical platform. Beyond building great software, you will act as a mentor and role model within the team, helping grow the technical capabilities of fellow engineers.
The team & how they connect
Our engineering team brings together passionate problem solvers who thrive on technical excellence, continuous learning, and open collaboration. We work closely together using modern agile practices, regularly engaging in code reviews and pair programming to support one another. The team actively partners across functions to ensure our solution designs align with broad product goals and technical standards.
The team is currently working on:
Refactoring monolithic architecture into scalable, modern distributed systems
Evolving our tech stack using languages and frameworks across AWS, C#, React, and Kubernetes
Enhancing test-driven development (TDD) practices and automated testing capabilities
Optimising our CI/CD pipelines to streamline deployment workflows
Where and how you can work
We offer flexible working options designed to help you balance your personal and professional life. Depending on your location, you can work through a hybrid approach combining working from home with time spent in one of our vibrant office spaces during collaborative boost days, or explore remote arrangements tailored to the team's setup.
Here are some of the things we're looking for, for this role:
Experience building high-quality, scalable software and working with distributed systems
Strong familiarity with modern tech stacks, test-driven development, and CI/CD tooling
Proven background in contributing to technical design solutions and making architectural decisions
A growth mindset paired with a genuine enthusiasm for mentoring and coaching team members
Comfort collaborating in an agile environment and engaging in thoughtful code reviews
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.
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