About this Principal Engineer - Reporting & Insights role at Xero
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 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.
