The role / impact

This role is a technical cornerstone of the engineering experience at Xero. As a Senior Engineer you are responsible for the architectural integrity and long-term evolution of the distributed systems that power our global developer community. You don't just build; you lead the design and refactoring of complex, high-stakes systems, ensuring they are resilient, scalable, and future-proof.

By defining engineering standards and making high-level design decisions, you will solve systemic technical challenges at a global scale. Your leadership ensures our internal integrations are seamless, providing the strategic infrastructure required to accelerate Xero’s technical vision and multi-year growth.

The Team / How They Connect

The Horizon team is a high-trust, cohort of engineers based across Melbourne and New Zealand. As a Senior member, you play a pivotal role in fostering technical excellence and mentorship within the group. We collaborate deeply on our eventing platform and data discovery tools, maintaining a culture of rigorous peer review, architectural spikes, and shared ownership of complex problems.

The team is currently working on"

• Scaling a global eventing platform using Apache Kafka and Confluent Cloud to enable high-throughput internal integrations.

• Leading the transition to Postgres to optimise eventing patterns and enhance data discovery capabilities.

• Finalising robust webhook implementations and architecting the technical strategy for the next generation of eventing.

• Championing a modern, polyglot stack including Terraform, AWS, C#, and TypeScript to drive developer productivity across the organisation.

Where and How You Can Work

This role is based in Melbourne with a flexible hybrid approach. While we empower autonomy, our Senior Engineers often lead the way in-office twice a week to facilitate whiteboarding sessions, mentorship, and face-to-face collaboration that strengthens our team culture.

Here are some of the things we are looking for

• You bring a mastery of system design and distributed patterns, with the ability to navigate the trade-offs of complex, large-scale software.

• You have extensive experience architecting solutions with Kafka or similar technologies, solving deep integration and consistency challenges.

• You possess a sophisticated grasp of Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) and the ability to design secure, cost-effective, and scalable AWS environments.

• You are an expert contributor in C# or TypeScript, comfortable setting the bar for code quality and maintainability across different languages.

• You are a natural mentor who proactively levels up the engineers around you and contributes to the broader Xero technical community.

• You thrive when owning major design milestones and enjoy the responsibility of evolving engineering frameworks that impact the entire business.

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.