Principal Engineer - Reporting & Insights

Xero is seeking a Principal Engineer for Reporting & Insights to drive engineering excellence and build global engineering teams. This role will focus on integrating the recently acquired Syft Analytics platform to accelerate Xero's mission of providing powerful insights. The position requires regular late hours (5pm-8pm AEST, Tue, Wed, Thu) for the first 12 months due to collaboration with a South Africa-based delivery team.

As a Principal Engineer, you will:

• Act as a role model for engineering excellence and high performance
• Drive company-wide multi-year goals
• Design and evaluate system architectures
• Influence technical strategy and partner with senior leadership
• Spread knowledge through talks, blog posts, or documentation
• Collaborate across functions to align technical solutions with business needs
• Grow talent by identifying and closing skill gaps

Key responsibilities include:

• Breaking down silos and facilitating cross-functional relationships
• Owning and delivering company-wide multi-year goals
• Designing scalable, reliable, and performant system architectures
• Driving engineering-wide processes and best practices
• Lifting team performance through leadership and coaching
• Staying current with technology trends
• Making architectural decisions and understanding complex systems
• Fostering a culture of experimentation and continuous empathy towards customers

The ideal candidate will have:

• Proven experience in a similar software engineering position
• Expertise in leading data platform engineering teams
• Strong understanding of experimentation methodologies
• Leadership skills to influence without authority
• Deep knowledge of relevant technologies (CDC, AWS, GCP)

Xero offers generous benefits, including flexible paid leave, health insurance, life insurance, income protection, wellbeing programs, 26 weeks of paid parental leave, an Employee Share Plan, and career development opportunities.