Role overview

Xero is seeking an experienced Engineering Manager to lead its Database Reliability Engineering teams across Australia and New Zealand. You will oversee two specialised teams managing the database infrastructure that supports millions of customer transactions daily, while driving a critical modernisation agenda that shifts the organisation from reactive problem-solving to strategic, proactive database management.

Key responsibilities

Lead and manage two specialised database engineering teams distributed across Australia and New Zealand, providing coaching and mentorship to experienced engineers.
Deliver an AI database administrator platform that embeds team knowledge into an agentic tool to handle incident response and automate routine support activities.
Guide the completion of global database migrations to RDS and oversee the modernisation of database technology from Microsoft SQL Server to Aurora Postgres.
Work with product teams to help them manage their own databases more effectively whilst reducing direct dependency on database engineering support.
Establish operational and cultural foundations that enable teams to transition from reactive incident response to proactive strategic consulting on database architecture and performance.
Navigate stakeholder complexity across technical and non-technical teams to bring people on the journey during significant organisational change.

Requirements

Deep understanding of database architecture and relational database systems, with familiarity across different database technologies including relational, non-relational, and cloud-managed services.
Demonstrated track record managing large-scale infrastructure projects or leading engineers through significant technical transformations, with a delivery mindset for breaking down complex work.
Proven ability to coach and mentor experienced engineers, identifying their strengths and facilitating their growth, particularly when adopting new technologies.
Strong relationship-building skills across technical and non-technical teams, with comfort navigating stakeholder complexity and driving organisational change.
PostgreSQL experience is preferable, though the ability to learn alongside your team and facilitate their growth in emerging technologies is what matters most.

What makes this role worth considering

This position offers the opportunity to shape how a significant organisation approaches database engineering at scale, with decisions that have downstream impact across the entire company. You’ll work with experienced engineers on complex infrastructure challenges whilst leading a critical modernisation agenda that fundamentally transforms the team’s approach to problem-solving. The role supports flexible working arrangements and is based in either Australia (Melbourne or Sydney) or New Zealand (Auckland or Wellington), reflecting where the distributed teams operate.