---
title: 'Lead Engineer - Payments Platform at Xero'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/lead-engineer-payments-platform-xero-vancouver-2fg3hn3xjs62'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-07'
---

# Lead Engineer - Payments Platform at Xero

- **Company:** [Xero](https://feeny.ai/companies/xero)
- **Location:** Vancouver, Canada
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-10-19
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-07
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/xero/4610d7b3-d178-4a7e-8cb0-f90507e92442

## Job description

## About the Role

For a small business, getting paid isn’t an abstract technical problem. It affects whether they can pay their people, buy supplies and take on their next opportunity. We connect money movement with financial context to help small businesses manage cash flow with greater confidence. Payments is one of Xero’s biggest areas of investment and growth. As a Lead Engineer on Payments Platform, you’ll join early-stage initiatives and make foundational architectural decisions for capabilities that power money movement across Xero and enable new product lines globally. Your work can span shared platform capabilities and customer-facing payment products, including global bill payments. You’ll stay hands-on in production code and proofs of concept while setting the technical direction other engineers and teams build on. It’s an opportunity to shape both the technology and the engineering practices of a growing team, with a direct connection to the problems small businesses face every day

The Technical Challenges

- A shared payments platform: Build orchestration, risk and fraud, and multi-provider capabilities that work across products and markets, helping teams launch new payment products faster without rebuilding the same foundations.
- Global bill payments: Make a complex financial process feel simple for small businesses while keeping it accurate, secure and connected to the accounting record.
- High throughput at scale: Design reliable, secure distributed services that remain dependable under real-world production constraints.
- Customer impact alongside architectural progress: Selectively rebuild and enhance existing systems, delivering value quickly while moving toward a coherent long-term architecture.
- AI capabilities customers can trust: Apply AI to challenging product problems while protecting customer trust, and bring the same discipline to how we evaluate and operate those capabilities.

Impact

- First 6 months: You understand the payments platform, its consumers and the customer problems it enables teams to solve. You’ve shipped production code and aligned the team on the architecture and roadmap for at least one core capability, such as onboarding, orchestration, risk and fraud, or multi-provider support. Through mentorship, technical reviews and practical improvements, you’ve helped elevate the team’s engineering capability.
- First 12 months: Your architectural decisions are operating in production and helping new payment products launch faster. You’ve helped establish engineering standards and clear ownership for the Vancouver Payments team, and your work is reaching small businesses through faster, safer ways to pay and get paid.

Ownership You’ll own the technical direction for your area of the payments platform, from design and proof of concept through production and on-call. You’ll lead architecture, API design and technology decisions for that area, with end-to-end accountability for reliability, security and operational excellence. You’ll work closely with engineering and cross-functional partners to make trade-offs explicit and turn direction into delivery. Your impact will come from both your own technical contributions and the capability you build in others. Because both the initiative and the Vancouver team are early in their development, you’ll also help shape engineering practices, quality standards and AI-assisted ways of working that make the team more effective over time.

Who You'll Work With

- [Lili Kan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lilixkan/), GM/VP, Payments Platform Engineering. Lili brings extensive experience building platforms and leading engineering teams in Silicon Valley. She previously led Payment Intelligence engineering at Stripe, building systems that protect payments from fraud. Before that, she spent four years at Uber, working across platform services, systems for operating self-driving fleets, and Driver Safety & Insurance Engineering.
- [Jing Feng](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jingff), Head of Engineering, Payments Platform. Jing brings engineering leadership experience from Uber, Apple, LinkedIn and Yahoo. Most recently, she led Risk Product Engineering at Uber, building capabilities to detect and prevent fraud and risk.

## What You Bring

Must-have:

- A proven track record of delivering highly available distributed backend systems and high-throughput services under real-world production constraints, with strong operational practices.
- Experience building platforms or products from an early idea into production, then evolving them as adoption and complexity grow.
- Deep understanding of system architecture, API design, and relational and non-relational databases, including the trade-offs between different approaches.
- Proficiency in a modern backend stack, such as C#, Java, Go or C++, and experience with cloud-native platforms such as AWS.
- Strong technical leadership: setting direction, mentoring engineers, fostering an inclusive culture and breaking complex problems into clear, actionable plans that lead to delivery.
- A hands-on approach to production code, proofs of concept and technical deep dives, alongside advanced use of AI tools to improve development workflows, with appropriate judgment and validation.

Nice to have:

- Experience in payments, fintech or money movement, such as payment orchestration, risk and fraud, or multi-provider integrations. Experience from adjacent domains with demanding reliability, security or correctness requirements is valuable too.
- Experience selectively rebuilding or modernizing established systems while continuing to deliver value to customers.
- A strong track record of partnering with Product, Design and other cross-functional teams to turn complex business needs into resilient engineering solutions.

## How We Work

We’re bold in our vision and pragmatic in execution, delivering useful improvements along the way rather than waiting for a large rewrite. We invest in AI to learn faster and focus effort on higher-value problems, while engineers stay accountable for what they ship. We use shared frameworks to avoid reinvention, leaving teams room to innovate. Engineers own their work, including quality, reliability, and on-call. Leaders set context and priorities, and engineers help shape the solutions.

Where We Work We offer a hybrid model that blends the flexibility of working from home with the collaboration of the office, including designated boost days in our modern office spaces. This role is open to hybrid candidates in Vancouver, British Columbia, or San Mateo, California. We also welcome applications from candidates across Canada interested in relocating to Vancouver, and from remote candidates in Seattle, Washington.

Our Hiring Process

- TX phone screen (45 minutes): a conversation with your Talent Specialist about your background, motivations and the role.
- Technical assessments: a coding assessment and a systems design assessment, run through an independent third-party provider and based on real-world scenarios.
- Technical deep dive (45–60 minutes): with a Principal Engineer and the hiring team. You'll walk through a past project you led, covering how you thought about it, executed it and led through its complexity.
- Values / Future Proof Xero (45 minutes): how you show up day to day, aligned with Xero's values and capabilities such as adaptability, ownership, customer thinking and AI fluency.
- LEADership (45–60 minutes): real examples of how you lead, influence and deliver in ambiguous, fast-changing environments, assessed against Xero's leadership principles.

## Compensation & Total Rewards

At Xero, we value the impact and skills you bring to the team. We believe in a Total Package philosophy - ensuring your value is recognized through a holistic lens that includes base salary, performance incentives, and world-class benefits.

The expected base salary range for this role is $186,000 - $236,000 CAD

Individual pay is determined by various factors, including geography, level of experience, and the specific skills you bring to the role.

In addition to base pay, Xero’s roles are eligible for the following forms of variable compensation:

- Variable Pay: Permanent employees are eligible to participate in our annual bonus and equity (RSU) programs. You may also be eligible for performance-based cash or equity (RSUs) incentives depending on your role level, and company performance.
- Comprehensive Benefits: World-class health, wellness, and retirement programs.[Xero Perks](https://careers.xero.com/inside-xero/benefits-wellbeing/) including Wellbeing days, generous leave, and dedicated professional development budgets.

This is a posting for an existing vacancy.

Xero uses AI to help screen applications based on job-related qualifications. These tools assist our recruiters but do not make automated hiring decisions. A human recruiter reviews all candidates before any hiring action is taken.

## 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/)

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