Lead Engineer - Payments Platform

The role

You will own the technical direction for the payments platform, including design, proof of concept, and production. You will build shared platform capabilities, global bill payments, and reliable distributed services. Your work involves hands-on coding and setting technical direction for other engineers.

What you will do

• Own technical direction for the payments platform area
• Lead architecture, API design, and technology decisions
• Maintain end-to-end accountability for reliability, security, and operational excellence
• Stay hands-on in production code and proofs of concept
• Set technical direction for other engineers and teams
• Build orchestration, risk, fraud, and multi-provider capabilities
• Design reliable, secure distributed services
• Selectively rebuild and enhance existing systems
• Apply AI to product problems
• Shape engineering practices, quality standards, and AI-assisted ways of working

Required qualifications

• Track record of delivering highly available distributed backend systems and high-throughput services
• Experience building platforms or products from early idea into production
• Deep understanding of system architecture, API design, and relational and non-relational databases
• Proficiency in a modern backend stack, such as C#, Java, Go or C++
• Experience with cloud-native platforms such as AWS
• Strong technical leadership including mentoring engineers and setting direction
• Hands-on approach to production code, proofs of concept and technical deep dives
• Advanced use of AI tools to improve development workflows

Nice to have

• Experience in payments, fintech or money movement, such as payment orchestration, risk and fraud, or multi-provider integrations
• Experience from adjacent domains with demanding reliability, security or correctness requirements
• Experience selectively rebuilding or modernizing established systems
• Strong track record of partnering with Product, Design and other cross-functional teams

Benefits

• Annual bonus
• Equity (RSU) programs
• Health, wellness, and retirement programs
• Wellbeing days
• Generous leave
• Dedicated professional development budgets

Before you apply

• Technical assessments include a coding assessment and a systems design assessment
• Technical deep dive involves walking through a past project led
• Xero uses AI to help screen applications based on job-related qualifications

About the company

Xero connects money movement with financial context to help small businesses manage cash flow. Payments is one of Xero's biggest areas of investment and growth.