Lead/Staff Backend Engineer, Payments Platform

Xero•San Mateo, CA

62d•$206,000 - $257,400

About The Position

At Xero, we're here to help you supercharge your business. We do this by automating routine tasks, surfacing actionable insights and connecting businesses with the right data, advisors and apps. When that happens, we're not only making life better for small business, we'll be building a stronger economy that can change the world. The Opportunity: Shape the Future of Money Movement Xero reimagined accounting software. Now, we're reimagining the flow of money itself. We're making a critical, multi-year investment in our new Payments Platform organization, the engine that will power payments across all of Xero's ecosystem. As a Lead/Staff Engineer on the Payments Platform, you'll be at the forefront of building scalable systems that redefine how millions of small businesses move money. This is a rare chance to join at an early stage, make foundational architectural decisions, and have a massive, visible impact on Xero's future.

Requirements

8+ Years of software engineering experience, with a proven track record as a Staff / Technical Lead delivering highly available, distributed backend systems at scale.
Deep expertise in system architecture, API design, and building high-throughput, reliable services-understanding how to design under the constraints of both new and existing systems.
Strong proficiency in at least one modern backend stack (e.g. C# a bonus, Java, Golang, C++) and experience with cloud-native platforms (AWS a bonus).
Experience with both SQL and NoSQL databases.
Demonstrated leadership in setting technical direction, solving complex problems, and mentoring senior and junior engineers.
Strong collaboration and communication skills, with the ability to work effectively across engineering, product, and operations.
Proven ability to break down complex problems into clear, actionable solutions and drive agile execution.
Experience auditing codebases to uphold high standards for security, testability, and maintainability, with the ability to set and guide code design decisions.

Nice To Haves

Experience in payments, fintech, or other highly regulated, compliance-heavy domains (preferred but not required).

Responsibilities

Define and build core platform services: Lead the design and development of reliable, scalable, performant, and secure services for Xero's Payments Platform.
Architect the future of payments: Shape the technical foundation for Xero's money movement capabilities while unlocking new product lines.
Stay hands-on: Contribute directly to production code, proof-of-concepts, and technical deep dives.
Solve complex problems: Tackle challenging fintech and distributed systems problems with innovative solutions.
Drive technical excellence: Set a high bar for reliability, security, and scale through design reviews, mentoring, and best practices.
Collaborate cross-functionally: Partner with Product, Security, Risk, and Operations teams to translate complex business needs into resilient engineering solutions.
Mentor and grow engineers: Act as a role model, coach, and technical leader, fostering a culture of inclusion, collaboration, and excellence.
Ensure operational excellence: Lead on-call practices, build robust observability, and champion high-performance, reliable systems.
Drive innovation: Encourage experimentation and adoption of new technologies, staying ahead of industry trends to strengthen our platform.

Benefits

Diversity of people brings diversity of thought, and we like that.
Our human-first culture of respect, fairness, and inclusion is what helps Xeros thrive and work and beyond.
Offering very generous paid leave to use however you'd like (plus statutory holidays!), dedicated paid leave to care for your physical and mental wellbeing as well as an Employee Assistance Program to access mental health care for you and your family, employee resource groups, wellbeing programming and allowances, medical, dental, vision, and disability insurance, fertility and family forming financial support, 401k contribution matching, 26 weeks of paid parental leave for primary caregivers, an Employee Share Plan, beautiful offices with snacks and break areas, flexible working, career development and many other benefits that reflect our human value, you'll do the best work of your life at Xero.

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