Principal Engineer - xero

The role

& impact

As a Principal Engineer in our payment platforms team, you will drive technical strategy and lead the architectural direction of systems that process critical financial transactions at scale. You will solve complex engineering challenges, shape future-proof architecture, and elevate technical excellence across the platform while directly influencing our core product vision.

Beyond guiding overall system design, you will act as a key technical leader and mentor to senior engineers. You will nurture a culture of continuous learning, champion best practices, and collaborate closely with cross-functional partners to ensure our payment systems remain reliable, performant, and secure.

The team & how they connect

You will join a dedicated payment platforms team that builds and scales the core infrastructure powering global transactions. Working alongside product managers, site reliability engineers, and software developers, the team operates in an agile, collaborative environment. Together, they focus on sharing knowledge, maintaining high quality standards, and building resilient systems that seamlessly connect our users to financial services.

The team is currently working on

• Modernising payment system architecture to handle high-volume distributed transactions safely and efficiently.
• Evolving microservices and cloud infrastructure using modern C#, React, and AWS capabilities.
• Optimising CI/CD deployment pipelines and expanding test-driven development (TDD) coverage.
• Defining organisation-wide engineering guidelines, architecture patterns, and technical strategy.

Where and how you can work

We offer a flexible hybrid working model designed to support balance, focus, and connection. You can work from home while taking advantage of our modern office spaces during team collaboration days, ensuring you have the environment and flexibility to perform at your best.

Here are some of the things we are looking for

• Deep expertise in building, scaling, and architecting complex distributed systems within cloud environments such as AWS.
• A strong background in C# backend development paired with an understanding of modern frontend frameworks like React.
• Demonstrated experience establishing technical direction, refactoring legacy components, and designing resilient platforms.
• Proven abilities in mentoring senior engineers and fostering engineering standards across multi-disciplinary teams.
• Solid practice in test-driven development (TDD) and modern CI/CD delivery processes.
• Exceptional communication skills to convey complex architectural concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Deep curiosity for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and experience working on or with AI tools.