After completing her Masters in Applied Geology from IIT Roorkee, Xelene began her career as an internal field development consultant for the Royal Dutch Shell. She grew within the company from a technical consultant to a project Risk Manager and Subsurface Coordinator within a short span of 5 years. In 2011, she joined the Indian Revenue Service as an Assistant Commissioner of the erstwhile Customs, Central Excise and Service tax department. She served for 4 years as an IRS officer, initially as the Head-of-Office of Division-1, Service Tax, Mumbai, at that time the second largest gross tax generating division in the country. She was then posted as Assistant Commissioner (Adjudication) in Customs, New Delhi.

Xelene quit the IRS in 2016 to start her own company. In this process, she realised that she needed a formal business education and subsequently joined the one-year MBA program at IIM Bangalore. Currently, she works as the Strategy Lead for the Anti-counterfeiting Business at Manipal Technologies Limited.