Xero's CTO Departure Highlights How SaaS Companies Are Restructuring AI Leadership

Xero chief technology officer Rick Carragher will leave the company in early August after 16 months in the role. Employees learned of his resignation internally before the announcement. It is the second senior departure from the accounting software company in a month, following chief people officer Jeff Ryan's exit in early July.

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The company moved quickly to reshape its technical leadership. Xero announced that Madhuri Dhulipala will join as SVP of Engineering, Payments & AI Transformation, reporting to chief product and technology officer Diya Jolly. Dhulipala arrives from BlackRock, where she served as managing director, following an earlier role as vice president at Salesforce. Taken together, the two moves look less like a vacancy and more like Xero reshaping ownership of AI delivery inside its technical organization.

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Carragher joined Xero last May as part of CEO Sukhinder Singh Cassidy's push to rebuild the New Zealand-based company's senior ranks with executives from US Big Tech. He previously held a director role at Amazon. Two people familiar with the matter told Forbes Australia his resignation stems from the travel demands of the role and the difficulty of working across multiple time zones, not from any strategic disagreement. Although he held the CTO title, Carragher reported to Jolly, operating within a broader technology organization led by the chief product and technology officer. During his tenure, he helped shape the company's AI strategy and its integration with Anthropic, along with its Vancouver product and tech hub.

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The leadership changes also come as software companies face growing pressure to show measurable returns from AI investment, prompting boards to rethink how product and engineering leadership is organized. Xero's shares remain more than 60% below last June's peak, part of what industry watchers have called the "SaaSpocalypse," as investors question how quickly AI investments will translate into business performance.

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Why the Reporting Structure Matters

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Carragher's departure is notable less for the title itself than for what it signals about how software companies are restructuring technical leadership around AI. Xero's structure reflects a broader shift at some enterprise software companies, where engineering leadership sits within a combined product and technology organization responsible for AI delivery instead of a standalone executive role.

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Dhulipala's new title points the same direction. Across enterprise software, boards are increasingly bringing product, engineering, and AI ownership together under a single leadership role in response to growing pressure to deliver measurable AI outcomes.

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Whoever Xero brings in next, on a permanent basis or otherwise, will inherit a technical organization already reshaped around that structure, and a board expecting AI investments to translate into measurable business results.