Principal Engineer - Backend/Platform Engineering

As a Principal Engineer in our Engineering Productivity team, you'll partner with our engineering community to build frictionless, developer-first platform tools that remove barriers and empower engineers to focus on what they do best; shipping high-impact software faster, safer, and at scale. Engineering Productivity is a specialist team within Xero's engineering organisation, focused on enabling our developer community through platforms and tooling. This is a distributed role across Australia and New Zealand. Teams are predominantly remote-first, with 1-2 on-site sessions per quarter (typically in Melbourne or Wellington/Auckland).

Responsibilities

Partner with the engineering community to build frictionless, developer-first platform tools; Optimise developer workflows and scale AI-native development practices; Work across the engineering landscape to identify and solve the highest-impact problems, collaborating with multiple teams and stakeholders to drive meaningful change; Collaborate with product, infrastructure, and technical leadership teams to remove friction and accelerate delivery

Requirements

Demonstrated expertise in DevEx, DevOps, or Platform Engineering, with a proven track record of building products and platforms that engineers love to use; Platform-as-a-product mindset, understanding engineers' pain points and designing scalable solutions; Comfort navigating ambiguous, rapidly evolving environments with shifting roadmaps and fluid requirements; Ability to influence and collaborate with senior technical stakeholders and executives, translating complex technical concepts into compelling narratives; Exposure to or hands-on experience with AI-native development practices, spec-driven development, or modern AI development lifecycles; Ability to mentor and grow others through influence and example rather than authority

Benefits

Flexible working hours and arrangements; Distributed role with autonomy over how and where you work