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 lead architecture, API design, and technology decisions while staying hands-on with production code. Your work involves building shared platform capabilities and customer-facing payment products.

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
• Shape engineering practices, quality standards, and AI-assisted ways of working
• Work with cross-functional partners to turn direction into delivery
• Build orchestration, risk, fraud, and multi-provider capabilities
• Design reliable, secure distributed services
• Apply AI to product problems

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
• Track record of partnering with Product, Design and other cross-functional teams

Benefits

• Medical
• Dental
• Vision
• 401(k) match
• 21 days PTO
• 10 days of Wellbeing leave
• 5 days of Xtra Leave
• 1 volunteer day
• 12 paid holidays
• Paid parental leave
• Annual bonus
• Equity (RSU) programs

Before you apply

• Technical assessments including coding and systems design assessments
• Technical deep dive interview
• Values / Future Proof Xero interview
• LEADership interview

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.