The Role At Xero, our purpose is to make running a business beautiful.
By delivering smart, efficient tools to millions of small businesses, accountants, and bookkeepers worldwide, we empower communities and help build a stronger global economy.
As a Lead Engineer , you will model the standard for engineering excellence at Xero.
You will balance hands-on technical execution with strategic engineering leadership—guiding technical design, mentoring a high-performing team, and delivering multi-quarter product and platform goals.
This is a unique opportunity to lead a team through a significant AI transformation .
You will lead the charge in harnessing agentic AI to optimize software development workflows while embedding intelligent, agentic features directly into our customer-facing products.
What You'll Do Drive AI Modernization Initiatives: Lead technical design and implementation, balancing legacy code modernization (C# / .NET, React) with cutting-edge agentic AI integration across internal workflows and customer features.
Hands-on Technical Leadership: Guide system architecture, simplify complex technical designs, and write clean, scalable, maintainable code.
Elevate Engineering Excellence: Identify technical blockers, champion modern quality and testing strategies, optimize CI/CD deployment pipelines, and maintain system resilience.
Incident Management Reliability: Recognise failure patterns, participate in the team on-call roster, lead incident responses, and facilitate post-mortems.
Mentor Lift Team Capability: Actively coach and mentor engineers, establishing a psychologically safe, inclusive, and high-performing culture focused on continuous learning.
Cross-Functional Collaboration Strategy: Build solid cross-functional relationships, break down operational silos, and influence technical roadmaps to achieve wider organizational goals.
What You'll Bring We value problem-solving ability,



adaptable thinking, and hands-on capability over rigid formal checklists.
Technical Expertise: Strong background in C# and .
NET environments is preferred (or expertise in similar OO languages like Java with a language-agnostic mindset and quick adaptability).
Distributed Architecture Scale: Proven experience designing, building, and maintaining scalable distributed systems and cloud platforms (e.g., AWS).
AI Enthusiast / Forward-Thinker: Genuine interest or hands-on experience in leveraging AI tools, LLMs, or agentic AI systems to transform engineering workflows and user experiences.
Diverse Environmental Exposure: Experience navigating complex codebases, legacy modernization, or fast-paced technical environments (e.g., consulting, fintech, banking, SaaS, or regulated sectors).
Pragmatic Leadership: A track record of coaching engineers, managing technical trade-offs, and resolving complex technical challenges with clear communication.
Note: A formal Computer Science degree is not mandatory —we prioritize real-world experience, skills, and impact.
Where How You'll Work We offer a flexible hybrid working model designed to balance autonomy, focus, and connection.
You can split your time between working remotely from home and collaborating in-person with your team at our vibrant offices in Sydney, Melbourne, or Brisbane .
Why Join Xero?
At Xero, we live by our core values: We make it beautiful: Create experiences that customers love.
We make it happen: Move fast on the right things and value progress over perfection.
We make it human: Care personally, challenge respectfully, and prioritize wellbeing.
We make it together: Collaborate transparently to build trust and achieve shared goals.
Apply even if your experience isn't a perfect match!
At Xero, we hire based on your skills, passion, and the unique perspective you bring to our team.
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📌 Lead Engineer (Melbourne)
🏢 Xero
📍 Melbourne