Atlassian’s Interview Process & Questions

The info below is based on conversations with Atlassian engineers.

Atlassian's Interview Process for Software Engineers: 3 Steps

Mid to senior-level engineers interviewing at Atlassian can expect the following hiring process:

• Recruiter call (30 minutes)
• Technical phone screen (1 hour)
• Onsite (4-5 hours)

At Atlassian, the process is centralized, meaning you won’t do team matching until after the onsite phase. You’ll be interviewed by people from different teams during the interview loop.

General tips:

• Their coding questions are discoverable online – they have a set bank that they use
• You can use any language for the coding rounds and your own IDE
• They have published their own guide to the engineering hiring process
• They hire remotely, but salaries are location-specific

The entire process takes about 4-6 weeks.

An engineer familiar with their hiring process told us that Atlassian’s “Chaos Score is very low, i.e., there is a high level of consistency in terms of process and outcomes for different candidates.

Step 1: Recruiter Call

Atlassian’s recruiter call lasts 30 minutes, and it’s pretty standard fare – they’ll ask you about your previous experience, why you’re interested in Atlassian, and how the teams you’ve worked on before have been structured. They’ll also discuss the possible roles that are available.

It’s really important, at this stage, to not reveal your salary expectations or where you are in the process with other companies. We’ve written a detailed post about salary negotiation that lays out exactly what to say if recruiters pressure you to name the first number.

Step 2: Technical Phone Screen via Karat

Atlassian uses a third-party interview service called Karat to conduct the technical screen that comes before the onsite. This seems to be true for most engineering roles but not all. If you haven’t been interviewed by Karat before, you’ll be interviewed by an engineer who does NOT work for Atlassian but who’s getting paid by Karat to conduct interviews on their behalf.

If you are interviewing for a backend or full stack engineering role, you’ll get a coding question. It will be a LeetCode-style, medium-level question selected from Atlassian’s question bank. You can find examples of the types of questions they ask online.

If you aren’t interviewing for a backend or full stack engineering role, we’ve heard that this can be a coding round OR a system design round and may be conducted by an Atlassian engineer, rather than an outsourced third party like Karat. If that ends up being the case, you will be able to use your own IDE or tooling, whatever language you’d prefer, and even any developer tools you use during your day-to-day, outside of AI technologies.

If you get a system design round, you might be asked to design something like a task list or job scheduler. You’ll be able to use any tooling you’d like to build the system. It’s really important to show how you are thinking about the problem by asking good questions, discussing tradeoffs and constraints, and mentioning both technologies and internal partners you might use to achieve your goal.

Step 3: Onsite

This will vary slightly by role but here’s what you can expect during the back-end and full-stack hiring loops.

• Coding x 2 (60 mins each). These interviews will be conducted in your IDE of choice. For more detail about the kinds of questions to expect, see the Coding section below.
• System design (60 mins). This interview will be conducted in the drawing tool of your choice. For more detail about the kinds of questions to expect, see the System Design section below.
• Values (45 mins). For more info about what questions to expect, see the Values section below.
• Manager interview (60 mins) For more info about what questions to expect, see the Manager interview section below.

Types of Interview Questions to Expect at Atlassian

Coding

Atlassian has a bank of questions that they use for coding rounds, and you can find examples online. Except something that feels like a LeetCode medium-level question.

They are trying to test out how you would approach a problem if you encountered it at work, so you’re able to use the language and tooling you are comfortable with. They are assessing you based on 5 key criteria:

1. Code Quality: Clean up your code as you go and act as if it is eventually going into production.
2. Adaptability: Be prepared to be given additional requirements to incorporate as you go and be open to change when it makes sense.
3. Conceptual Thinking: Break down the problem in components and discuss it in conceptual terms before you start to solve it.
4. Decision Making: They put more focus on why you approach a problem from a certain angle than whether you solve it. Discuss the pros and cons of your decisions.
5. Resourcefulness: They want to see how you use your experience and other resources to solve problems when needed.

Be prepared to discuss how to scale your solution as well!

Below are the technical topics you’re likely to encounter in Atlassian interviews. To compile this list, we did two things. First, we spoke to some current and former Atlassian engineers. Then we cross-referenced all the anecdotes we heard with Glassdoor data AND our own data-set of mock interviews:

System Design

Again, you can use any tooling you’d like for this round. You might be asked to:

• Design a job scheduler
• Design a task list
• Design a tagging system

This is a pretty standard system design interview. You won’t need to code anything and the focus will be on how you would build the system and the tradeoffs, considerations and optimizations that might be involved.

Check out our guide to system design interviews to help you prepare.

Values

This interview can be conducted by anyone at the company. You might talk to someone from Marketing, Sales or any other department. It will feature scenario-based behavioral questions. They prefer the STAR framework for answering questions, so brush up on that methodology. It’s a good idea to review Atlassian’s values and incorporate them into your answers. Expect questions about how you’ve handled giving and getting feedback, how you’ve worked on teams, etc.

Manager Interview

This is another behavioral interview, this time with an engineering manager, and it will be a deep dive into a past project you’ve worked on with a team, so be sure to prepare. The types of questions that you get here will focus on things you learned while working as part of a team and the scale and scope of your impact. They will ask questions around conflict resolution, the lessons you’ve learned, how you’ve mentored others, and how you were able to drive outcomes. Again, knowing Atlassian’s values, and incorporating them into your answers will help.

How Atlassian Makes Hiring Decisions

Decisions are made by a hiring committee. We don’t have a lot of information on their process but we do know that they sometimes ask you to complete an additional round if you didn’t quite meet the bar during the onsite.