---
title: 'Engineer - SRE at Xero'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/engineer-sre-xero-sydney-ns9cja1n0y8d'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-31'
---

# Engineer - SRE at Xero

- **Company:** [Xero](https://feeny.ai/companies/xero)
- **Location:** Sydney, Australia
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-10-29
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-31
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/xero/09fa178b-b997-4f48-ae19-b8a61919cef0

## Job description

## The role / impact

Reliability is a top strategic priority at Xero, directly influencing customer trust across more than 3,000 services. In this Site Reliability Engineering role, you will help shift reliability into a front-row discipline, moving beyond reactive fixes to uncover and resolve systemic resilience challenges across our global platform. You will partner closely with product teams to design reliability by default, ensuring our systems withstand unexpected events while supporting millions of small businesses. You will take ownership of platform health by building automated tooling, championing chaos engineering experiments, and identifying potential failures before they impact customers. From coordinating incident management rituals and post-incident analysis to introducing load-shedding mechanisms, your contributions will directly safeguard platform availability and elevate engineering practices across the organisation. The team / how they connect You will join a focused Site Reliability Engineering team spanning Australia and the United States, responsible for incident management strategy, artificial intelligence operations tooling, and high-availability frameworks. The team works in close partnership with product and infrastructure squads across Xero, embedding alongside engineers to resolve shared reliability gaps and implement resilient design patterns. Together, the team shares incident commander responsibilities across regions, turning operational learnings into long-term systemic stability. The team is currently working on / Initially, you will focus on

- Working across a modern technical stack centred on Kubernetes, AWS (including ECS and managed services), Golang, Python, and C#.
- Developing custom Kubernetes operators to automate storage resizing, alert provisioning, and reliability-by-default capabilities for development teams.
- Enhancing telemetry pipelines to extract AWS-specific metrics from managed services and route actionable alerts directly to product squads.
- Implementing chaos engineering scenarios to test infrastructure failure modes, alongside building API load shedding and rate limiting to protect services against traffic surges.

Where and how you can work This role offers the flexibility to work remotely from anywhere in Australia, with office hubs available in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Whether you prefer working from home or coming into our collaborative spaces for team gatherings and boost days, we provide the autonomy to create a working routine that suits you best. Here are some of the things we are looking for

- You bring a solid background in site reliability engineering or DevOps, with experience diagnosing and strengthening distributed systems.
- You have practical experience managing containerised workloads in Kubernetes and running infrastructure on cloud platforms such as AWS.
- Your skillset includes practical coding proficiency in Golang, Python, or C#, coupled with curiosity for applying modern AI tools to operational challenges.
- You display strong agency and initiative, proactively identifying operational friction and proposing sustainable technical solutions without waiting for instruction.
- You demonstrate familiarity with incident management, participating in on-call responses and conducting post-incident reviews that translate into permanent fixes.
- You possess clear communication skills, consistently linking technical reliability investments directly to customer needs and measurable business outcomes.

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.

## About Xero

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Xero provides cloud-based accounting and financial management software for small businesses, serving over 4.9 million customers worldwide.
- **Entity Type**: Public (ASX: XRO, S&P/ASX 200 component)
- **Headquarters**: Wellington, New Zealand
- **Founded**: July 6, 2006
- **Founders**: Rod Drury, Hamish Edwards

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Cloud accounting software (SaaS)
- **Target customers**: Small businesses, accountants, and bookkeepers (B2B)
- **Mission**: To make life better for small businesses globally by automating routine tasks and delivering actionable insights.

## Products & Services
- **Xero Accounting Software**: Cloud-based platform for invoicing, bank reconciliation, expense tracking, payroll, and financial reporting. Sold by subscription (Starter, Standard, Premium tiers).
- **JAX – AI Finance Partner**: An AI-powered assistant integrated into Xero that automates routine tasks and provides insights to help businesses grow.
- **Xero Ecosystem**: Over 1,000 third-party app integrations via the Xero App Store, covering payments, inventory, CRM, and more.
- **Xero for Nonprofits**: Discounted subscriptions (25% off) for eligible nonprofit and community organisations.
- **Xero for Purpose**: Social impact initiatives including financial literacy programmes (Unlock Your Numbers), sustainability tools (Sumday carbon app), and the Xero Beautiful Business Fund (NZ$750,000+ in funding annually).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed in provided sources (publicly traded with market cap available on ASX; latest data not included in search results).
- **Key Metric**: Annual Revenue NZ$2.103 billion (FY2025); Net income NZ$227.8 million (FY2025).
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Board Chair David Thodey; CEO Sukhinder Singh Cassidy. In June 2025, Xero announced an agreement to acquire Melio, a New York-based payments provider, for $2.5 billion.
- **Growth Signals**: Achieved Rule of 40 outcomes of 41.0% (May 2024) and 43.9% (Nov 2024). Customer base grew to 4.9 million. Headcount of 4,610 employees (2025). Expanding globally with offices in New Zealand, Australia, UK, US, Canada, South Africa, and Singapore.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Market leader** in cloud accounting across New Zealand, Australia, and the UK.
- **AI-first approach** with JAX, embedded directly into the core product to reduce manual work.
- **Extensive integration ecosystem** (1,000+ apps) creating high switching costs for customers.
- **Strong brand trust** built over 19 years with a focus on small business success.

## Strategic Focus
- **AI and automation**: Deepening AI capabilities (JAX) to deliver predictive insights and automate finance workflows.
- **Payments expansion**: Acquisition of Melio to strengthen payments capabilities for small businesses.
- **Sustainability**: Reducing carbon emissions (72% reduction in scope 1 & 2), offering free carbon accounting tools, and supporting small business sustainability.
- **Social impact**: Scaling programmes like the Beautiful Business Fund and financial literacy initiatives.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Values-driven, human-centric organisation with a focus on making a tangible impact on small businesses globally.
- **Flexibility**: Emphasises a flexible environment and time for what matters most (remote/hybrid policy not explicitly stated but implied).
- **Perks & benefits**:
  - One paid day off per year for volunteering (Community Connect programme).
  - Free access to Sumday carbon accounting app for employees.
  - Financial literacy resources and mentorship programmes.
- **Engineering & innovation**: Dedicated Engineering and Data & AI teams (open roles visible on careers page). Global collaboration across 7+ countries.
- **Diversity & inclusion**: Indigenous inclusion initiatives (te ao Māori in NZ, Reconciliation Action Plan in Australia), support for Indigenous communities.
- **Sustainability focus**: Employees can contribute to environmental goals through company-wide initiatives.

## Sources
1. [Wikipedia – Xero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xero)
2. [Xero About Page](https://www.xero.com/au/about/)
3. [Xero Careers – Inside Xero](https://careers.xero.com/inside-xero/)
4. [Xero Careers – Teams](https://careers.xero.com/)
5. [Xero Homepage](https://www.xero.com/)

## Other roles at Xero

- [Engineering Manager (Platform)](https://feeny.ai/job/engineering-manager-platform-xero-wellington-awnfhcf0mq0v) — Wellington, New Zealand
- [Engineering Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/engineering-manager-xero-sydney-sjjssjdywmrz) — Sydney, Australia
- [Head of Engineering - Making Payments](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-engineering-making-payments-xero-melbourne-dzwx3qsaay0t) — Melbourne, Australia
- [Senior Site Reliability Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-site-reliability-engineer-xero-new-south-wales-bcsyf1529rma) — New South Wales, Australia
- [Customer Experience Specialist](https://feeny.ai/job/customer-experience-specialist-xero-hawkes-bay-hjkar6h76a1p) — Hawkes Bay, New Zealand
- [Customer Experience Specialist](https://feeny.ai/job/customer-experience-specialist-xero-wellington-w4zkmsfy2a98) — Wellington, New Zealand
- [Customer Experience Specialist](https://feeny.ai/job/customer-experience-specialist-xero-auckland-nceqxxw2m3yd) — Auckland, New Zealand
- [Customer Experience Specialist - Melio](https://feeny.ai/job/customer-experience-specialist-melio-xero-manchester-0apnfjtyx359) — Manchester, United Kingdom
- [Lead Engineer - Applied AI](https://feeny.ai/job/lead-engineer-applied-ai-xero-sydney-89g6byn47f3p) — Sydney, Australia
- [Senior Forward Deployed Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-forward-deployed-engineer-xero-vancouver-qz46hzfd1kpt) — Vancouver, Canada