Engineering Manager- Payments Platform

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, and it's how small businesses get paid, pay their people, and take on their next opportunity. As Engineering Manager, you'll lead the Payments Platform engineering team in Vancouver as it takes on early-stage initiatives that power money movement across Xero and enable new product lines globally, including global bill payments. You'll keep the team delivering while building the engineering practices and capability it needs to grow.

THE TECHNICAL CHALLENGES

The team is building the capabilities that sit underneath every payment a small business makes or receives. Four problems define the work:

• 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.

Your job is to make sure the team can take on these problems together, sequencing the work so that both customer value and long-term architecture move forward.

IMPACT

• First 6 months: you'll understand the payments platform, its consumers, and the customer problems it enables teams to solve. You'll have the team delivering production code, with a clear delivery plan and roadmap agreed for at least one core capability, such as onboarding, orchestration, risk and fraud, or multi-provider support. You'll also have set up healthy on-call and review practices, and you'll be building the team's capability through mentoring and technical reviews.

• First 12 months:the team's architectural decisions will be running in production and helping new payment products launch faster. You'll have established engineering standards and clear ownership across the Vancouver Payments team, and the work will be reaching small businesses through faster, safer ways to pay and get paid.

OWNERSHIP

You'll own the delivery, staffing, and operational health of the Vancouver Payments engineering team, including hiring, performance, and career development for every engineer on it. You'll set the team's priorities with the product and engineering leadership, and you'll own the team's processes, quality standards, and on-call practices within agreed standards. Technical architecture decisions for the platform sit with the team's technical leads and principal engineers, and you'll make sure those decisions are backed by a team that can deliver them. Because the initiative and the team are both early in their development, you'll help shape how the team works, including its use of AI-assisted development. Engineers on the team own their work, including quality, reliability, and on-call, and you'll make sure that accountability is built into how the team operates.

WHO YOU'LL WORK WITH

• Lili Kan, 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, 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

• A proven record of leading engineering teams that deliver highly available distributed systems under real production constraints, with strong operational practices

• Experience growing and managing engineers, including hiring, performance management, and career development, and a track record of building inclusive, high-trust team cultures

• Experience building a platform or product from an early idea into production, and evolving it as adoption and complexity grow

• Enough technical depth in system architecture, API design, and data stores to guide design reviews and trade-off decisions with your technical leads

• Experience setting direction and breaking complex problems into clear, actionable plans that lead to delivery

• Comfort using AI tools to improve development workflows, with judgment about when and how to validate their output

Nice to have:

• Experience in payments, fintech, or money movement, such as payment orchestration, risk and fraud, or multi-provider integrations. Experience in adjacent domains with demanding reliability, security, or correctness requirements is also valuable.

• Experience modernizing established systems while continuing to deliver value to customers

• A 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. We also welcome applications from candidates across Canada interested in relocating to Vancouver.

OUR HIRING PROCESS

1. TX phone screen (45 minutes): a conversation with your Talent Specialist about your background, motivations and the role.

2. Technical assessments: A systems design assessment, run through an independent third-party provider and based on real-world scenarios.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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 $188,000 - $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 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.