Senior Data Scientist
Lead end-to-end data science projects in payroll product area, influencing conversion and retention for small businesses, and mentor junior scientists to raise the team's technical bar.
Skills required
About this role
The role & impact
As a Senior Data Scientist within Payroll, you'll own end-to-end data science projects that shape one of Xero's flagship product areas. From framing the problem through to analysis, experimentation and productionised models, your work will directly influence conversion, retention and outcomes for small businesses and their advisors.
You'll bring strong technical judgement to nuanced, high-impact problems, using modern AI tooling and automation to accelerate your work while maintaining scientific rigour. Alongside your own projects, you'll help raise the bar for the wider team, mentoring earlier-career scientists and contributing to a strong technical and scientific culture.
The team & how they connect
The Product Data Science & Engineering team partners closely with Product and Technology to drive decisions through experimentation, measurement and AI-powered analytics. Rather than servicing requests, the team helps set the product's direction, turning workflows into agentic processes and bringing AI applications into production. This role sits within the Payroll product area, working closely with product managers, engineers and data science peers across Xero.
The team is currently working on
Tech stack: SQL, Python, Snowflake, dbt and Git
Current focus: ML models for conversion propensity and opportunity sizing within Payroll
Current focus: Measurement frameworks for AI product outcomes
Future direction: AI-powered analytics and agentic workflows, including evaluation and guardrails
Where and how you can work
Xero offers a flexible hybrid working model designed to blend the collaboration of office life with the autonomy of remote work. You will have access to our modern office spaces, with expectations around office days and collaborative 'boost days' aligned to help your team connect and ship great code effectively.
Here are some of the things we're looking for, for this role
You'll bring strong proficiency in SQL and Python, along with a solid grounding in statistics and experimentation design
Confidence communicating with senior stakeholders comes naturally to you, and you know how to bring clarity to nuanced problems
You've productionised machine learning models end to end, ideally within a modern data stack such as Snowflake, dbt and Git
Mentoring earlier-career scientists is something you enjoy, and you take pride in lifting the quality bar around you
A genuine curiosity about AI and automation drives you to find better, faster ways to deliver insight
Working across product, engineering and design comes easily to you, and you know how to keep momentum despite ambiguity
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.
