Engineering Team Lead
Auckland, NZ / Wellington, NZ / Remote, NZ
Ecosystem – Ecosystem Development /
Permanent /
Hybrid
Our Purpose
At Xero, we’re here to help you supercharge your business. We do this by automating routine tasks, surfacing actionable insights and connecting businesses with the right data, advisors and apps. When that happens, we’re not only making life better for small business, we’ll be building a stronger economy that can change the world.
About Xero
At Xero, we're on a mission to make life better for people in small business, their advisors, and communities around the world. We combine the scale and resources of a global tech leader with the energy and ambition of a startup. Our purpose is at the heart of everything we do, and we support our people to do the best work of their lives, guided by our values of #Human, #Beautiful, #Challenge, and #Together.
About the Ecosystem
Ready to make a huge impact? The Ecosystem is a central and established part of Xero's success, connecting millions of users to a global network of app partners. The engineering function within the Ecosystem is comprised of four teams, each with about six engineers, working together on a shared mission. We're looking to accelerate our pace and foster a culture of innovation and agility as we build powerful new features and capabilities for our platform.
As a Team Lead, you will be responsible for the health, happiness, and high performance of one of these engineering teams, creating an environment where they can do their best work.
About the Role: Lead, Coach, and Deliver
As an Engineering Team Lead, your primary focus is on your people and their delivery. You are dedicated to building a resilient, high-performing, and autonomous team. You will partner closely with a Product Manager and a Lead Engineer to guide the team's work, but your passion lies in coaching and developing your engineers to the point where they can operate effectively without you. You'll be responsible for creating a supportive and inclusive environment where the team can thrive, feeling proud of their work and happy to contribute. This includes fostering a culture of high standards and accountability, where challenges are met with support.
This is a people leadership role focused on growing engineers and fostering an amazing team culture. While your priority is people leadership, we expect you to be a capable engineer who can be hands-on with code and architecture when the team needs it.
What you'll do:
- Lead and develop your team: Nurture a team of talented engineers through regular coaching, mentoring, career development conversations, and performance feedback.
- Foster a healthy culture: Cultivate a positive, inclusive, and collaborative team environment where psychological safety and a culture of feedback are paramount.
- Drive impactful delivery: Partner with the Product Manager to create clear, realistic plans that focus on shipping value. You'll ensure the team delivers on its commitments with both speed and quality.
- Grow the team: Be responsible for hiring and onboarding new engineers, ensuring they are set up for success from day one.
- Champion effective practices: Guide the team in agile and lean principles, helping them to continuously improve their ways of working and deliver value efficiently.
- Represent your team: Act as the voice of your team, ensuring their successes are celebrated and their challenges are understood by the wider organisation.
What you'll bring:
- A passion for people leadership, with a focus on successfully mentoring, coaching, and growing engineers.
- A strong delivery mindset. You have a knack for pragmatic planning, a drive to get things done, and excel at creating an environment of ownership and accountability.
- A commitment to building autonomous teams. You foster a culture of deep ownership and trust, empowering your team to take initiative and eventually operate without you as a critical dependency.
- A commitment to creating a high-trust environment through transparency. You are skilled at having candid, constructive conversations about performance and failure, always with the goal of helping the team and individuals grow.
- A genuine belief that a happy team is a high-performing team. You care about your people's wellbeing and are motivated by seeing them proud of what they deliver.
- A drive for continuous improvement. You're always looking for ways to make the team better, whether it's through improving processes or championing new technologies like AI-powered coding.
- High emotional intelligence (EQ). You are self-aware, empathetic, and skilled at building strong, trusting relationships.
- A deep understanding of agile and lean delivery. You know how to create a high-performing, sustainable team environment and effectively apply concepts like MVP.
- Excellent communication and facilitation skills. You encourage healthy debate, can navigate difficult conversations, and align people towards a common goal.
- Strong technical capabilities as a hands-on engineer. You have the ability to contribute to code, design, and architecture, allowing you to effectively guide your team through their most complex challenges.
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, free medical insurance, 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.
