Role overview

Xero is recruiting Engineering Managers for multiple teams across New Zealand, with openings in Payments, Small Business Experience, and Inventory. In this role, you will own your team’s roadmap and strategy end-to-end, driving both delivery velocity and technical excellence while serving as a genuine technical leader alongside Product and Design partners.

Key responsibilities

Lead a platform or product-focused engineering team, setting direction and making prioritisation decisions that balance delivery and technical quality.
Actively participate in critical engineering decisions, including system architecture, platform design, and build-versus-buy trade-offs.
Champion AI-native engineering practices across your team, turning experimentation into sustainable practices and workflows.
Co-own strategic direction for your domain as an equal partner with Product and Design, resolving dependencies and influencing product thinking with technical insight.
Coach, mentor, and advocate for the career progression of your engineers, creating a sustainable environment where they can excel.
Make fast, decentralised decisions and empower your team to take ownership of their work.
Lead through influence, building strong partnerships across functions and contributing technical perspectives to shape shared strategy.

Requirements

Proven track record of owning and delivering software roadmaps end-to-end in agile environments, including managing complex dependencies.
Deep experience in software architecture and system design, with confidence leading technical trade-off discussions and steering teams through modernisation efforts.
Experience championing AI-native practices in engineering, such as AI-assisted code review, code generation, and tooling.
Demonstrated passion for coaching, mentoring, and supporting engineer career progression.
Strong operational mindset with a proven history of delivering and maintaining high-availability systems.
Leadership approach centred on making fast decisions, empowering team ownership, and building partnerships across Product and Design.
Bias for action and ability to proactively redirect focus when work isn’t moving the needle on business outcomes.

What makes this role worth considering

The Payments team manages some of Xero’s most critical products, serving approximately 70% of Xero’s global subscriber base and directly impacting millions of customers worldwide. The Inventory team is distributed across Auckland, Wellington, and remote NZ locations, working on closing critical functionality gaps while modernising core systems with direct customer feedback on impact. Both roles offer the opportunity to lead high-performing teams in a hybrid working model that balances local office presence with flexibility to work remotely.