Principal Engineer - Reporting & Insights

ABOUT THE ROLE

• Millions of small businesses and their advisors use Xero reports and insights to decide what to do next.
• AI is changing how people understand their finances faster than any shift since the cloud, and Reporting & Insights is where Xero meets that change.
• Over the next few years we're evolving reporting and insights for the agentic era, where customers ask an AI about their numbers as often as they open a Balance Sheet.
• As the senior technical leader for Reporting & Insights, you'll set the multi-year technical direction, from the reports businesses file to the insights that tell them what to do next.
• You'll also help hire the first Reporting & Insights engineers in Vancouver and decide how they work.

THE TECHNICAL CHALLENGES

• Set a 3-year architecture across Reporting & Insights.
• Reporting and Xero Analytics run on a mix of modern services and systems that have grown with Xero over many years.
• You'll define one target state across both, decide how they build on Xero's data platform, and secure the investment to get there.
• You'll design for high throughput, low latency and resilience, so reporting and insights scale with Xero's largest and most complex customers.
• Evolve the platform without breaking trust.
• Accountants file tax returns from these numbers, so correctness comes first.
• You'll lead the evolution of the data foundations behind about 150 reports, sequenced across teams and organisational boundaries.
• Customers keep the numbers they trust, on foundations built for what comes next.
• Make reporting and insights AI-native.
• AI changes what reporting and insights can be: answers to plain-language questions, insights that reach customers where they work, and analysis that once took an accountant hours.
• Every answer still has to reconcile to the ledger.
• You'll define the foundations: how agents query financial data safely, how answers stay grounded and explainable, and how we prove correctness at scale.
• We want teams across Xero to build on what you create.

IMPACT

In your first six months you'll own the Reporting & Insights architecture and set a direction for the data platform and the evolution of both products that engineering, Product and leadership back.

At twelve months you will have:

• Set a multi-year technical strategy for Reporting & Insights
• Delivered new foundations for the first major report families, setting Reporting & Insights up for its next phase of growth
• Opened Reporting & Insights to bigger businesses, with performance that scales to our largest customers
• Put shared foundations for AI-native reporting and insights into production
• Grown the Lead and Senior Engineers around you and raised the technical bar across the group

Beyond year one, you'll shape where Reporting & Insights goes next, and help steer Xero's wider data and AI direction alongside the leadership team.

OWNERSHIP

• You're the senior technical voice for Reporting & Insights.
• You own the multi-year technical strategy and target architecture, and you make the calls that cross team and domain boundaries.
• You shape the roadmap with the GM and Product, decide where we invest in foundational capabilities, and align teams across regions behind one direction.
• You stay hands-on where it counts: reference implementations, foundational frameworks and the hardest architecture problems

WHO YOU'LL WORK WITH

• You'll report to the GM of Engineering.
• You'll partner with the engineering managers and teams across Reporting & Insights, who know these products and their data in depth.
• You'll shape the product and AI roadmap with the Reporting & Insights Product leads.
• You'll also work with Principal Engineers and platform teams across Xero, including the accounting core and data platform teams that own systems we depend on.

WHAT YOU BRING

Must-have:

• You've set technical strategy for a domain or portfolio over a 2 to 3 year horizon, and aligned multiple teams behind it.
• You've led the evolution of a large, high-traffic, correctness-critical system across organisational boundaries.
• You have depth in high-throughput, low-latency, resilient distributed systems and data-heavy architecture, and you still contribute hands-on where it matters.
• You connect external shifts, AI above all, to product and architecture strategy, and you know where LLMs and agents belong in a system.
• You grow leaders. You've mentored Lead and Senior Engineers into bigger roles, and your writing turns complex direction into decisions people act on.

Nice to have

• Financial, reporting or analytics domain experience
• LLM or agent-based features in production
• .NET and AWS
• A presence in the wider tech community through talks, writing or open source

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 don't just hire for a role; we invest in people.
• We believe in a Total Package philosophy - which means your value isn't just a single number on a paycheque.
• While base salary is a core component, we look at your compensation through a holistic lens that includes equity, performance incentives, and world-class benefits.
• The expected base salary range for this role in:

• Washington, WA & San Mateo, CA: $287,000 - $320,000 USD

• 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: Medical, dental, vision, 401(k) match, and 21 days PTO, 10 days of Wellbeing leave, 5 days of Xtra Leave, 1 volunteer day, 12 paid holidays, paid parental leave. Further information included on our Xero Perks https://careers.xero.com/inside-xero/benefits-wellbeing/ page

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.