Principal Engineer

As Principal Engineer you’ll be responsible for building global engineering teams by:

• Influencing the technical strategy of a group, often partnering closely with Heads of Engineering and/or senior product and engineering leadership to ensure the health of product development as a whole and influences the overall direction of product development. 
• Collaboration with product managers, designers, and other stakeholders to align technical solutions with business needs. Principal Engineer helps break down silos within and across functions and influences others to reach the best outcome for Xero. They build deep cross-functional relationships, facilitate the right conversations, and settle disagreements by managing different viewpoints.
• Principal Engineer lifts team performance through goal clarity, feedback, removal of barriers, coaching and establishing a psychologically safe inclusive team culture.
• They model a standard of excellence that supports a culture of high performance on their team. They drive engineering-wide processes and define the bar for quality and best practices. They devote time to spreading knowledge widely via talks, blog posts or written documentation.
• Proven experience in software engineering with a focus on system architecture and design.
• Strong understanding of experimentation methodologies, including A/B testing and rapid prototyping.
• Champion a culture of experimentation, encouraging the team to test new ideas and technologies through prototypes and proof-of-concept projects.

What you’ll do

• We make it beautiful: Support, develop and deliver by actively measuring, monitoring, and continuously improving the performance and reliability of applications you are responsible for.
• We make it happen: Delivery Management / Planning and Execution: Expertise in planning, executing, and monitoring projects, often using Agile or other methodologies to ensure timely delivery.
• We make it human: Proactive in exploring new technologies and methodologies to improve processes and product offerings. Collaborate and coach your team to align to Xero Engineering Standards eg: compliance and security requirements in the Path to Production Standard, front-end development requirements in the Web Application Standard.
• We make it together: Strong ability to communicate technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders and advocate for the engineering team's needs. This includes Cross-Functional Collaboration in working with product management, design, and other departments to ensure cohesive project alignment.

About you

• Demonstrate knowledge, skills and expertise leading data platform engineering teams, driving project goals, and maintaining high standards of quality with a deep understanding of the relevant technologies (CDC, AWS, GCP), tools, and processes in their domain (e.g., software development, systems engineering).
• Share expertise and experience to connect and support the growth of a culture of continuous empathy towards our customers among your team with the ability to make architectural decisions and understand complex systems to guide teams effectively.
• Attributes and motivations to grow the talent in the team by identifying skill gaps and ensuring there is a clear strategy to close those gaps (which might include upskilling, reassigning or hiring team members).