Lead Software Engineer - React Native

THE ROLE / IMPACT We are looking for a Lead Engineer to join the engineering teams behind the Xero Accounting App (XAA), our flagship React Native-powered mobile experience that helps small business owners stay on top of their finances wherever they are. You will balance high-velocity product delivery with a relentless focus on system health and engineering practices, while keeping your hands in the code and mentoring your squad to ship better, faster. Core Tech Stack (Non-Negotiable): React Native and TypeScript. You're an expert in both. You write production React Native code daily, establish the technical bar for your squad, and work confidently across the mobile-backend boundary. You'll tackle open-ended problems, exercise high-level technical judgment, and define both the what and the how for your squad's product and platform goals. You'll lift squad performance by providing goal clarity, removing technical barriers, mentoring engineers, and establishing a psychologically safe, inclusive culture where people do their best work. THE TEAM / HOW THEY CONNECT We are the engineering teams behind the Xero Accounting mobile app. We thrive in a hybrid, high-velocity, cross-functional environment, partnering closely with Product and Design to deliver beautiful mobile experiences. We collaborate deeply with web, platform, and backend teams to ensure a reliable and seamless experience across all channels. We are investing heavily in React Native capability and this is an exciting time to join as we scale and accelerate value delivery for our customers. YOUR SQUAD WILL FOCUS ON - Ship Value: Lead and deliver high-impact mobile workflows for key jobs-to-be-done such as dashboards, notifications, tasks, insights, banking flows, and mobile subscriptions-delivering experiences that surpass customer expectations. You'll define the technical approach and unblock your squad to move fast. - Operational Excellence: Champion a "production-first" mindset. Uphold our responsibility for availability, accuracy, security, and scalability by automating delivery pipelines, identifying and solving common failure patterns, and leading incident responses. You'll establish proactive health monitoring practices to keep systems resilient under pressure. - React Native Quality & Velocity: Drive efficiency by identifying technical debt, simplifying complex designs, optimizing performance (bundle size, startup time, frame rate), and leveraging modern practices (including AI) to improve how your squad builds. You'll establish TypeScript-first practices and ship value to customers faster without sacrificing quality. WHERE AND HOW YOU CAN WORK Our teams are located in Australia and this hybrid role is based in Melbourne or Sydney, offering the flexibility to balance deep-focus work with high-bandwidth collaboration in our beautiful offices. HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE ARE LOOKING FOR Core Requirements (Non-Negotiable): - React Native + TypeScript Expertise: Hands-on React Native development with strong TypeScript proficiency, ideally 5+ years in react native & 10+ years in overall software development. You ship production React Native code regularly, understand the framework deeply (not just React web knowledge), and have strong opinions on type safety and mobile architecture. You can spot performance issues, debug native modules, and optimize for mobile constraints. - Mobile-First Mindset: You reason about problems through a mobile lens—understanding performance budgets, battery impact, memory constraints, and how mobile UX differs from web. You're customer-obsessed and think about how technical decisions affect the end user experience on mobile devices. - API & Backend Collaboration: Solid experience working across the mobile-backend boundary. You understand API design from a mobile consumption perspective, can troubleshoot integration issues, contribute to BFF/API discussions, and advocate for mobile needs—but you're not expected to own backend infrastructure or databases. ADDITIONAL STRENGTHS: - You bring a mastery of software design patterns and the ability to architect squad-level features that are maintainable, testable, and performant. - You are a natural mentor and coach who raises the technical bar of the squad, manages multiple workstreams without losing momentum, and communicates with clarity to engineers, product managers, and non-technical stakeholders. - You have experience building robust mobile applications at scale and understand the operational challenges of shipping to millions of users. - You are biased toward action, thrive in fast-moving environments, and turn ambiguity into clear technical direction for your team. - You embrace modern tooling, AI-assisted development, and continuous learning to improve squad velocity and code quality. WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE - Your squad ships high-impact features on a regular cadence while maintaining system health and reliability. - Engineers in your squad are growing—gaining React Native expertise, writing better TypeScript, and feeling empowered to make good technical decisions. - Incident response is collaborative and blameless; you champion learning from failures and shipping preventive measures. - Your squad's code is clean, well-typed, performant, and maintainable. Technical debt is tracked intentionally, not ignored. - You and your squad are known as advocates for mobile best practices across the wider engineering organization. Please apply even if your experience isn't a perfect match! At Xero, we hire based on your skills, passion, and the unique perspective you can bring to enhance our culture and team.