Senior Backend Engineer, Payments Platform - Xero

Job Title: Senior Backend Engineer, Payments Platform
Job Location: San Mateo, US
Job Listing URL: https://jobs.lever.co/xero/016f04b6-dba7-4142-9f92-ae512725b43d
Job Description: Our Purpose
At Xero, we’re here to help you supercharge your business. We do this by automating routine tasks, surfacing actionable insights and connecting businesses with the right data, advisors and apps. When that happens, we’re not only making life better for small business, we’ll be building a stronger economy that can change the world.

The Opportunity: Shape the Future of Money Movement

Xero reimagined accounting software. Now, we’re reimagining the flow of money itself. We’re making a critical, multi-year investment in our new Payments Platform organization—the engine that will power payments across all of Xero’s ecosystem.

As a Senior Backend Engineer on the Payments Platform, you’ll play a key role in building scalable systems that redefine how millions of small businesses move money. This is a rare chance to join at an early stage, contribute directly to foundational systems, and have a meaningful, visible impact on Xero’s future.
What You'll Bring With You
6+ years of software engineering experience, with a proven track record delivering highly available, distributed backend systems at scale.
Strong expertise in system design, API development, and building reliable, high-throughput services—balancing trade-offs between new and existing systems.
Proficiency in at least one modern backend stack (e.g. C# a bonus, Java, Golang, C++) and experience with cloud-native platforms (AWS a bonus).
Experience with both SQL and NoSQL databases.
Ability to drive technical design and lead implementation of complex projects end-to-end.
Experience mentoring junior engineers and helping raise the technical bar within a team.
Familiarity with payments, fintech, or other highly regulated, compliance-heavy domains (preferred but not required).
Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to work effectively in an agile, collaborative environment.
Commitment to code quality—experience with code reviews, testing practices, and building maintainable systems.
What You’ll Do
Design and build core services: Contribute to the development of reliable, scalable, performant, and secure services that power Xero’s Payments Platform.
Drive technical design: Lead the design and implementation of complex features and projects, ensuring solutions are robust and extensible.
Stay hands-on: Write production-quality code, build proof-of-concepts, and participate in design and code reviews.
Solve challenging problems: Work on distributed systems, global payment integrations, compliance, and risk-related challenges.
Collaborate across teams: Work closely with Product, Security, Risk, and Operations to translate business needs into technical solutions.
Mentor teammates: Support the growth of junior engineers by sharing knowledge, providing feedback, and modeling best practices.
Champion operational excellence: Contribute to on-call practices, observability, and monitoring to ensure high system reliability.
Continuously improve: Stay up-to-date on industry trends, adopt new technologies where appropriate, and improve team processes and practices.
Why Join Xero’s Payments Platform?
Massive Impact: Build a global payments platform that is central to Xero’s revenue and customer growth.
Hard Problems, High Scale: Tackle complex fintech challenges like orchestration, compliance, fraud, and global rails.
Early Stage, Real Ownership: Contribute to foundational systems that future products and revenue streams will rely on.
Culture & Growth: Join a team that values excellence, collaboration, and innovation—while supporting your growth to do the best work of your career.

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