SlipstreamJobs tracks this role from the company's public career site. Apply directly on the employer's site.
Xero is hiring Engineering Managers for three teams in New Zealand: Payments, Small Business Experience, and Inventory. You will own the roadmap and strategy for your team end-to-end, setting direction, making prioritization calls, and driving delivery of high-quality software through high-performing, inclusive teams.
As a technical leader, you will be a genuine technical voice in the room, leading system design discussions, navigating architectural trade-offs, and shaping how the team evolves its technical foundations. Your impact spans both delivery velocity and technical excellence. You will actively contribute to critical engineering decisions, from system architecture and platform design to build-vs-buy trade-offs, while championing AI-native workflows and guiding your team to hone their craft in ways that deliver meaningful business and customer outcomes.
You will lead a coordinated platform or product-focused team where building trust through transparency and seeking diverse perspectives are core to how you work. As an equal partner with Product and Design, you will co-own the strategic direction of your domain—resolving dependencies early, influencing product thinking with technical insight, and creating a sustainable environment where engineers can do their best work.
Payments team: You'll lead a high-performing 6-7 person engineering team based in Auckland that manages some of Xero's most critical products. Your team serves approximately 70% of Xero's global subscriber base, which means the systems you oversee directly impact millions of customers worldwide. This is a role for someone who thrives in a high-stakes environment and wants to modernize legacy systems while maintaining a relaxed, collaborative team culture.
Inventory team: You'll lead a distributed 9-person engineering team across Auckland, Wellington, and remote NZ locations. Inventory is on a mission to help small and mid-sized product-based businesses keep their accounting accurate and simple. You'll own a team directly responsible for closing critical gaps in functionality and modernizing core systems—with tangible feedback from customers proving the impact of your work. This is a role for a technical leader with strong operational mindset and a track record of delivering and maintaining high-availability systems.
The role can be based in Auckland or Wellington in New Zealand, with some scope for remote NZ location for one of the engineering teams. Hybrid working model balances local team presence with global scope of work, with flexibility to work from home while connecting with colleagues during designated boost days.
REQUIREMENTS:
- Champion AI-native practices in engineering (AI-assisted PR reviews, code generation, tooling, agentic workflows) and turn experimentation into durable practice
- Proven track record of owning and delivering software roadmaps end-to-end in agile environments, including managing complex dependencies and making strategic prioritization decisions
- Deep experience in software architecture and system design, with confidence to lead technical trade-off discussions and steer teams through significant modernization efforts
- Passion for providing high support through coaching, mentoring, and advocating for career progression of engineers
- Leadership approach involving fast, decentralized decisions and empowering teams to take ownership
- Ability to lead through influence, building strong partnerships across Product and Design; contributing technical perspectives to shape shared strategy
- Bias for action, proactively redirecting focus when work isn't moving the needle on business outcomes
