General Manager, Data Science

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About the role

At Xero, we’re here to supercharge small businesses. By making small business more efficient every day, connecting them with big business technology and empowering a community behind them, their potential is limitless. When that happens, we’re not only helping small business, we’ll be building a stronger economy that can change the world.At Xero, we’re here to supercharge small businesses. By making small business more efficient every day, connecting them with big business technology and empowering a community behind them, their potential is limitless. When that happens, we’re not only helping small business, we’ll be building a stronger economy that can change the world. THE ROLE & TEAM Product Data Science & Engineering is a portfolio team within Product & Technology. Partnering across Product, Engineering, Design, Marketing, and Commercial leadership, we set Xero’s data science strategy across broad product areas and operate in an AI-native way—using AI to transform how we work, not just what we ship. The team co-own Xero's metrics stack, experimentation strategy, and enterprise data architecture and builds AI-powered customer experiences including the Jax chatbot and agentic workflows—in partnership with Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google. They also lead AI measurement and productionisation. We work in an AI-native way. That means AI changes how data science itself gets done here, not just what we ship. This is a new strategic leadership role created to scale Xero's data science and AI capabilities. You will take full ownership of the data science, analytics, ML, and AI strategy and execution across Accounting & Bookkeeping, Small Business, and AI products. This role combines strategic product vision (including Jax, agentic workflows, and AI-powered features) with platform thinking across the metrics stack, experimentation, data quality, and governance, driving enterprise-level impact across every product team. WHAT YOU’LL DO - You will translate company-level objectives into strategic sub-objectives across analytics, ML, AI products, and experimentation, elevating both the quality of decisions and the leverage Xero gains from its data and AI investments. - Lead, mentor, and grow a team of data scientists, analytics engineers, ML engineers, and managers, scaling the function from ~12 to ~30. - Design team structures and operating models that preserve high throughput across multiple locations and time zones. - Operate as an AI-native leader, driving how AI changes how data science operates and ships value across Xero. - Act as the primary data partner to Product & Technology, advising C-suite and SLT on data utilization, retention strategy, new data domains, and AI investment decisions. - Represent data science in executive forums and partner with Product, Engineering, Design, Marketing, Commercial, Legal, Privacy and Risk on strategy, prioritisation and governance. - Own AI governance, model risk, data quality, privacy posture, and experimentation integrity across the portfolio, ensuring company-wide compliance and integrity. - Drive behavioral, technical, and cultural standards across the vertical. Own and improve global hiring practices, build talent maps, and coach senior leaders and individual contributors to raise the bar across Xero. - Proactively identify delivery and strategic risks, designing robust organizational processes that yield consistent, high-quality outcomes for Xero. WHAT YOU’LL BRING WITH YOU We welcome candidates from analyst, scientist, engineer, or AI/ML-focused backgrounds—a linear data science career is not required. What matters most is that you have operated, shipped, and led at scale within a fast-paced technology environment. As a self-starter and executive par

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