Staff ML Engineer

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.

The AI team at Xero brings together ML Engineers and Applied Scientists to build systems that power Xero's next generation of beautiful, insightful products.

About The Team

The AI Products group exists to collaboratively build products that use AI and ML to reduce toil and deliver the right insight at the right time. Working within the Data & Science team, you will join a diverse, globally distributed team of scientists, engineers, product managers, and analysts who help Xero turn data into beautiful, insightful products.

ML engineers design and build the infrastructure and services that power AI products that serve millions of customers every day. They also work closely with Applied Scientists through the research and development process to create harnesses and interfaces to safely take models from research to production environments. As a Staff ML Engineer, you will lead delivery programs and co-lead research programs that push the boundaries of what's possible with today's technology.

• Leading the design of our AI research and production infrastructure and services, ensuring that our services scale while preserving flexibility for research teams
• Owning our strategy for managing the growth rate of technical debt and costs across our stack
• Making sure we're solving the right problems with the right methods
• Sharing knowledge with colleagues and lifting the bar for the AI Products team
• Working with teams across Xero to improve the quality and usability of data 
• Building Xero's profile in market through public facing content and events

• You have 6+ years of experience delivering ML and AI products at scale
• You are drawn to solving hard problems and understanding how things work
• You are comfortable learning new frameworks (distributed processing, ML, etc) and applying them to real problems
• You are willing to dive into the unknown, and allow new information to change your decisions
• Constant learning and growth are an important part of who you are
• You are always willing to learn from others and ask for help

• Strong coding and system design skills in Python or another language used in web scale data and AI applications
• Strong SQL skills and understanding of distributed processing (data, ML, etc)
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills for communicating technical concepts to technical and business stakeholders
• Experience developing sensible standards and mentoring early career ML engineers
• Familiarity with Tensorflow is a nice to have

Why Xero? 

Diversity of people brings diversity of thought, and we like that. Our human-first culture of respect, fairness, and inclusion is what helps Xeros thrive and work and beyond. 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, employee resource groups, wellbeing programming and allowances, medical, dental, vision, and disability insurance, fertility and family forming financial support, 401k contribution matching, 26 weeks of paid parental leave for primary caregivers, an Employee Share Plan, beautiful offices with snacks and break areas, flexible working, career development and many other benefits that reflect our human value, you’ll do the best work of your life at Xero.

Research has shown that women and underrepresented groups are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single competency or experience. If you are excited about this role, but your past experience doesn't align perfectly, we encourage you to apply anyway. You could be just the right person for this role and Xero. If you have any support or access requirements, we encourage you to advise us at time of application and throughout the interview process.