For a small business, getting paid isn’t an abstract technical problem. We connect money movement with financial context to help small businesses manage cash flow with greater confidence. As a Lead Engineer on Payments Platform, you’ll join early‑stage initiatives and make foundational architectural decisions for capabilities that power money movement across Xero and enable new product lines globally.

Your work can span shared platform capabilities and customer‑facing payment products, including global bill payments. You’ll stay hands‑on in production code and proofs of concept while setting the technical direction other engineers and teams build on. It’s an opportunity to shape both the technology and the engineering practices of a growing team, with a direct connection to the problems small businesses face every day.

The Technical Challenges

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. Make a complex financial process feel simple for small businesses while keeping it accurate, secure and connected to the accounting record.

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. You understand the payments platform, its consumers and the customer problems it enables teams to solve. You’ve shipped production code and aligned the team on the architecture and roadmap for at least one core capability, such as onboarding, orchestration, risk and fraud, or multi-provider support.

Through mentorship, technical reviews and practical improvements, you’ve helped elevate the team’s engineering capability. Your architectural decisions are operating in production and helping new payment products launch faster. You’ve helped establish engineering standards and explicit ownership for the Vancouver Payments team, and your work is reaching small businesses through faster, safer ways to pay and get paid.





You’ll own the technical direction for your area of the payments platform, from design and proof of concept through production and on‑call.

Your impact will come from both your own technical contributions and the capability you build in others. Because both the initiative and the Vancouver team are early in their development, you’ll also help shape engineering practices, quality standards and AI‑assisted ways of working that make the team more effective over time. 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. Most recently, she led Risk Product Engineering at Uber, building capabilities to detect and prevent fraud and risk.

Experience building platforms or products from an early idea into production, then evolving them as adoption and complexity grow. Deep understanding of system architecture, API design, and relational and non‑relational databases, including the trade‑offs between different approaches. Proficiency in a modern backend stack, such as C#, Java, Go or C++, and experience with cloud‑native platforms such as AWS.

Strong technical leadership: setting direction, mentoring engineers, fostering an inclusive culture and breaking complex problems into clear, actionable plans that lead to delivery. A hands‑on approach to production code, proofs of concept and technical deep dives, alongside advanced use of AI tools to improve development workflows, with appropriate judgment and validation.

Experience in payments, fintech or money movement, such as payment orchestration, risk and fraud, or multi‑provider integrations.





Experience selectively rebuilding or modernizing established systems while continuing to deliver value to customers. A strong track record of partnering with Product, Design and other cross‑functional teams to turn complex business needs into resilient engineering solutions. We invest in AI to learn faster and focus effort on higher‑value problems, while engineers stay accountable for what they ship.

Engineers own their work, including quality, reliability, and on‑call. Leaders set context and priorities, and engineers help shape the solutions.

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. We also welcome applications from candidates across Canada interested in relocating to Vancouver, and from remote candidates in Seattle, Washington. 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. 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 $186,000 - $236,000 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. Xero uses AI to help screen applications based on job‑related qualifications. These tools assist our recruiters but do not make automated hiring decisions.

📌 Lead Developer, Platform Engineering (Toronto)
🏢 Xero
📍 Toronto