The role and its impact This is a senior individual contributor and technical leadership role at the heart of one of Xero’s most strategically key initiatives.

As Principal

Engineer for Platform API, you will define and drive the long-term technical vision for how Xero exposes its accounting capabilities to external partners (building on our platform) and to internal product teams who depend on a reliable, well-designed API layer to move fast. Beyond the external surface, this role sits at the intersection of platform engineering and AI. The APIs you design and steward will serve as the trusted foundation for AI- and agent-driven automation across Xero’s accounting workflows; It is a rare opportunity to do genuinely consequential technical work at scale.

We work across domain and organisational boundaries, partnering closely with product management, AI/ML teams, developer relations, and engineering squads across the company to ensure our platform is coherent, reliable, and a genuine accelerator for everyone who builds on it.

As Principal

Engineer, you will be a key voice in shaping technical direction not just within the team, but across Xero’s broader engineering community. Our current technical stack includes an open source graph technologies powered by gRPC, and backend services built in modern languages like C#, Go, or Java. We are standing up a developer platform to provide a seamless path from domain models to running APIs integrated with CI/CD and production runtimes.

You will help deliver across core accounting domains using the Supergraph model to consolidate our technical stack and developer experience. This role is based in our Vancouver office.



We embrace a hybrid working model that balances the flexibility of work from home with purposeful in-person collaboration.

A deep background in backend or platform engineering at scale; ideally in multi-tenant SaaS or distributed systems environments, with strong proficiency in a modern language such as C#, Go, or Java Familiarity with event-driven architecture (webhooks, message queues, pub/sub patterns, and idempotent consumers) and the ability to design for failure and recovery in these systems A track record of leading complex, cross-team technical initiatives: shaping technical strategy, facilitating design reviews and RFCs, and aligning multiple stakeholders without losing momentum Exposure to LLM- or ML-powered products, agentic architectures, or AI safety and governance concerns, and an understanding of how API and event design decisions affect model quality, safety, and reliability A genuine approach to mentoring and growing engineering capability in others; from coaching individual engineers through to building communities of practice around platform and API thinking 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 $227,600 - $284,600 CAD.

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. World-class health, wellness, and retirement programs.

📌 Principal Engineer (API Platform) (Vancouver)
🏢 Xero
📍 Vancouver