Lead Engineer - API Platform

Summary

Join Xero's Catalyst Engineering team as a Lead Engineer and become a technical authority for the Xero Gateway pod. Guide your team in designing, building, and maintaining the critical infrastructure supporting Xero's public-facing APIs. This hands-on role blends technical expertise with mentorship and strategic vision. You will make significant technical decisions, drive engineering excellence, and shape Xero's connection with the world. Lead complex projects, collaborate with various teams, and act as a subject matter expert on cloud networking, API gateways, and infrastructure security. Champion modern engineering principles and foster a culture of innovation and accountability.

Requirements

• Proven experience in a technical leadership role, with a track record of mentoring engineers and delivering complex, distributed systems
• Deep expertise in cloud networking and infrastructure, particularly with AWS, and a strong command of container orchestration using Kubernetes
• Extensive hands-on experience with Infrastructure as Code, using tools like Terraform to build and manage production environments
• Strong software development fundamentals, with proficiency in languages such as C# or Typescript
• A strategic mindset with the ability to solve complex problems, assess technical trade-offs, and make data-informed decisions
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders

Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership and strategic direction for the design, development, and operation of the Xero Gateway and associated API ingress solutions
• Mentor, coach, and develop a high-performing team of engineers, fostering a culture of innovation, accountability, and engineering excellence
• Own the architectural vision and technical roadmap for your pod's domain, ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, resilient, and align with Xero's broader technical strategy
• Champion and implement modern engineering principles, including infrastructure as code, comprehensive automation, and data-driven decision-making to enhance the effectiveness of Xero's platform
• Lead complex engineering projects, from initial concept through to delivery and ongoing operational support, solving challenging problems at scale
• Collaborate with product managers, architects, and other engineering leads to define priorities, influence cross-team initiatives, and ensure the successful delivery of our API platform strategy
• Act as a subject matter expert on cloud networking, API gateways, and infrastructure security, driving best practices across the engineering community

Preferred Qualifications

Experience with API gateways (such as Gloo Gateway or similar) and a strong understanding of API lifecycle management is highly desirable

Benefits

• Very generous paid leave to use however you’d like (plus statutory holidays!)
• Dedicated paid leave to care for your physical and mental wellbeing as well as an Employee Assistance Program to access mental health care for you and your family
• Health insurance, life insurance, and income protection
• Wellbeing and sports programmes, employee resource groups, 26 weeks of paid parental leave for primary caregivers, an Employee Share Plan, beautiful offices, flexible working, career development, and many other benefits that reflect our human value