Lead Software Engineer

The role / impact

We are looking for a Lead Engineer to join the engineering teams behind the Xero Accounting App (XAA), our flagship mobile experience that helps small business owners stay on top of their finances wherever they are. You will balance high-velocity product delivery with a relentless focus on system health and engineering practices, leveraging AI to improve productivity and ship value to our customers, faster.

You’ll tackle open-ended problems, exercise high-level technical judgment, and define both the what and the how for multi-year, multi-team product or platform goals.

You’ll lift team performance by providing goal clarity, removing barriers, and establishing a psychologically safe, inclusive culture.

The team / how they connect

We are the engineering teams behind the Xero Accounting mobile app. We thrive in a hybrid, high velocity and cross-functional environment, partnering closely with Product and Design teams to deliver beautiful mobile experiences for customers, faster. We collaborate deeply with web, platform and domain teams to ensure a reliable and seamless experience across all channels.

The team is currently working on

• Ship Value: Lead and deliver high impact mobile workflows for key jobs-to-be-done such as banking, invoicing, payments, files within the mobile channel that surpass customer expectations.

• Operation Excellence: Championing a "production-first" mindset. You will uphold our solemn responsibility for availability, accuracy, security and scalability by automating delivery pipelines and solving common failure patterns. You will lead incident responses and champion proactive health monitoring to ensure our systems remain resilient under pressure.

• Efficiency: Get better at our work over time to deliver value more efficiently. You will drive efficiency by identifying technical waste, simplifying complex designs, and leveraging modern practices (including AI) to deliver value to customers faster.

Where and how you can work

Our teams are located in Australia and this hybrid role is based in Melbourne or Sydney, offering the flexibility to balance deep-focus work with high-bandwidth collaboration in our beautiful offices.

Here are some of the things we are looking for

• Deep expertise in React Native and Native development, with a proven track record of building robust mobile applications at a global scale, alongside a high degree of openness to learn new technologies.

• A mastery of software design patterns, distributed architectures, and cloud infrastructure (preferably AWS, Kubernetes, and CI/CD).

• Customer obsession is at the heart of your work, and you ensure that customer needs remain at the centre of everything you do.

• You thrive in dynamic environments, acting as a stabilising force that translates shifting business directions into clear, exciting opportunities. You are the person who turns change into a win—keeping the team energised, focused, and moving toward the high impact outcomes without missing a beat.

• A bias for action defines your approach; you prefer taking incremental steps and learning through execution, prioritising practical progress and momentum over over-analysis.

• You view clear and accurate communication as a fundamental engineering discipline, allowing you to translate business needs into technical specifications and explain complex constraints with data-driven clarity.

Please apply even if your experience isn't a perfect match! At Xero, we hire based on your skills, passion, and the unique perspective you can bring to enhance our culture and team.