Principal Engineer in Toronto

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.
• Define one target state across both Reporting and Xero Analytics, deciding how they build on Xero’s data platform.
• Design for high throughput, low latency and resilience, ensuring reporting and insights scale with Xero’s largest and most complex customers.
• Lead the evolution of the data foundations behind about 150 reports, ensuring correctness comes first.
• Define the foundations for AI-native reporting and insights, ensuring answers reconcile to the ledger and remain explainable.

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.
• By twelve months, you will have set a multi-year technical strategy for Reporting & Insights and delivered new foundations for major report families.
• 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, shaping the roadmap with the GM and Product, and aligning teams across regions behind one direction.

Who You’ll Work With

You’ll report to the GM of Engineering and partner with engineering managers and teams across Reporting & Insights. You’ll shape the product and AI roadmap with the Reporting & Insights Product leads.

What You Bring

• You’ve set technical strategy for a domain or portfolio over a 2 to 3 year horizon.
• You’ve led the evolution of a large, high-traffic, correctness-critical system.
• You have depth in high-throughput, low-latency, resilient distributed systems and data-heavy architecture.
• You connect external shifts, particularly AI, to product and architecture strategy.
• You grow leaders and mentor Lead and Senior Engineers into bigger roles.

Nice To Have

• Financial, reporting or analytics domain experience.
• LLM or agent-based features in production.
• .NET and AWS experience.
• 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. We invest in AI to learn faster and focus effort on higher-value problems, while engineers stay accountable for what they ship.

Where We Work

We offer a hybrid model that blends the flexibility of working from home with the collaboration of the office. 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.
• Technical deep dive (45-60 minutes): with a Principal Engineer and the hiring team.
• Values / Future Proof Xero (45 minutes): how you show up day to day, aligned with Xero's values.
• LEADership (45-60 minutes): real examples of how you lead, influence and deliver.

Compensation & Total Rewards

At Xero, we value the impact and skills you bring to the team. The expected base salary range for this role is $227,700 - $284,600 CAD. Individual pay is determined by various factors, including geography, level of experience, and specific skills.

In addition to base pay, Xero’s roles are eligible for variable compensation, including annual bonuses and equity programs.

Comprehensive Benefits include world-class health, wellness, and retirement programs.