Xero is a beautiful, easy-to-use platform that helps small businesses and their accounting and bookkeeping advisors grow and thrive.
At Xero, our purpose is to make life better for people in small business, their advisors, and communities around the world. This purpose sits at the centre of everything we do. We support our people to do the best work of their lives so that they can help small businesses succeed through better tools, information and connections. Because when they succeed they make a difference, and when millions of small businesses are making a difference, the world is a more beautiful place.
How you’ll make an impact
The role of the Engineering Manager is to lead, grow and manage leaders of engineering teams who build software for new or improved features in Xero’s products and its associated service delivery systems. This specific position will ensure a smooth integration of our recent acquisition of Syft Analytics, the leading global cloud-based reporting, insights and analytics platform for small businesses, accountants and bookkeepers to accelerate our mission to provide powerful insights.
Due to your delivery team being based in South Africa, this position will require regular after hours AU. We anticipate this to be 5pm-8pm AU, Tue, Wed, Thu for the first 12 months of this position. You will have full flexibility on how you structure your day but online availability for online meetings during this time is required.
As an Engineering Manager you’ll be responsible for building global engineering teams by:
- Attracting, recruiting and retaining capable individuals, building on and complementing the diversity of our teams.
- Championing and driving processes and practices that make it possible for engineers to get great work done, while promoting a safe environment for people to experiment and learn.
- Role-modeling exemplary leadership, supporting and growing the next generation of engineering leaders at Xero.
What you’ll do
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We make it beautiful: Support, develop and deliver by actively measuring, monitoring, and continuously improving the performance and reliability of applications you are responsible for.
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We make it happen: Delivery Management / Planning and Execution: Expertise in planning, executing, and monitoring projects, often using Agile or other methodologies to ensure timely delivery.
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We make it human: Collaborate as a leader of leaders (Engineering Leadership), you will be a coach and advisor to your direct reports and act as an escalation point for them to continuously align your team with Xero’s objectives and deliverables. Collaborate and coach your team to align to Xero Engineering Standards eg: compliance and security requirements in the Path to Production Standard, front-end development requirements in the Web Application Standard.
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We make it together: Strong ability to communicate technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders and advocate for the engineering team's needs. This includes Cross-Functional Collaboration in working with product management, design, and other departments to ensure cohesive project alignment.
About you
- Demonstrate knowledge, skills and expertise managing software development teams and proven track record at building and maintaining good team culture with a deep understanding of the relevant technologies, tools, and processes in their domain (e.g., software development, systems engineering).
- Share expertise and experience to connect and support the growth of a culture of continuous empathy towards our customers among your team with the ability to make architectural decisions and understand complex systems to guide teams effectively.
- Attributes and motivations to grow the talent in the team by identifying skill gaps and ensuring there is a clear strategy to close those gaps (which might include upskilling, reassigning or hiring team members).Coach the team on Agile software engineering practices, ensuring your team's technical practices are continuously improved to deliver high-quality software that is secure, robust and scalable.
- Lead Engineering teams are unblocked, supported, and accelerated in their adoption of DevSecOps tools and practices, through pairing, mentoring, coaching, and collaboration. This includes familiarity with coding and development practices, enabling better collaboration with engineers and troubleshooting.
- Demonstrated ability to implement and manage experimentation frameworks, including A/B testing and iterative development.
- Analyze results from experiments to make data-driven decisions and refine our engineering strategies.
- Mentor team members, encouraging them to explore new technologies and methodologies in their work.
Why Xero?
Offering very generous paid leave to use however you’d like (plus statutory holidays!), dedicated paid leave to care for your physical and mental wellbeing as well as an Employee Assistance Program to access mental health care for you and your family, health insurance, life insurance, and income protection, wellbeing and sports programmes, employee resource groups, 26 weeks of paid parental leave for primary caregivers, an Employee Share Plan, beautiful offices, flexible working, career development, and many other benefits that reflect our human value, you’ll do the best work of your life at Xero.
