Principal Software Engineer - React Native

About the role

Xero is looking for a Principal Engineer to join the teams behind the Xero Accounting App, its flagship mobile experience for small business owners. You will define the standard for engineering excellence, strengthen technical capabilities and shape the architectural direction to support the global product roadmap. The role is hybrid and based in Melbourne or Sydney.

Key responsibilities

• Shape the mobile technical roadmap in partnership with product and design, and drive architectural strategy across mobile squads.
• Lead the most complex and ambiguous technical initiatives and set the engineering standard for code quality, reliability and operational maturity.
• Establish reference patterns, best practices and architectural standards for high-performance React Native apps, optimising bundle size, performance, native module integration and TypeScript-first development.
• Lead collaboration between mobile and backend teams, ensuring API contracts fit mobile consumption patterns and advocating the mobile perspective in system design.
• Champion strict TypeScript practices and mentor engineers on patterns that catch errors at compile time.
• Define frameworks for SLOs, quality standards, crash analytics and reliability metrics, focusing on strategic prevention of issues.
• Coach lead engineers, recruit top React Native and TypeScript talent and engage with the broader React Native community.
• Work across the feature boundary with backend services and BFF/API layers, troubleshooting integration issues without owning infrastructure or full service architecture.
• Define and execute a vision for AI-assisted development that improves how React Native code is written, tested and optimized.

Required profile

• Extensive experience building and leading mobile applications in high-growth, large-scale environments.
• Experience scaling React Native codebases, build pipelines and release automation.
• Able to thrive in ambiguity and turn shifting business directions into high-level technical roadmaps.
• Focus on strategic prevention, using metrics such as crash rates, API latency and bundle size to drive improvement.

Required skills

• React Native
• TypeScript
• Cloud-native backend APIs and API contracts

The role is not a backend role; it owns mobile excellence end-to-end. Applicants are invited to apply even if their experience is not a perfect match.