
Atlassian Software Engineer Behavioral (Values) Interview Template
What this interview covers: A structured behavioral (values-focused) conversation designed to assess how you collaborate, make decisions, and deliver impact at scale in a product-led, highly distributed environment. Atlassian calibrates this interview against its core values: 1) Open company, no bullshit; 2) Build with heart and balance; 3) Don’t #@!% the customer; 4) Play, as a team; 5) Be the change you seek. Format and flow (typical): - 60 minutes total; 5 min intros, ~40–45 min deep-dive behavioral questions with follow-up probes, 5–10 min for your questions. - Interviewers: 1–2 Atlassians (often an engineer or EM plus a trained “values” interviewer). Structured note-taking with standardized rubrics; STAR/PAR is expected. Focus areas specific to Atlassian: - Collaboration in distributed teams: async-first habits (clear written comms, Confluence pages, RFCs), handoffs across time zones, using Jira for alignment and transparency. - Customer-centric decisions: balancing craft, velocity, and safety; trade-offs that protect reliability/security; escalation and incident learnings (blameless postmortems). - Ownership and bias to action: scoping ambiguous problems, shipping iteratively, influencing without authority across product/design/QA. - Openness and candor: sharing context early, healthy dissent then commit, giving/receiving feedback respectfully. - Quality and operational excellence: on-call etiquette, rollback/feature flags, follow-through on corrective actions. - Growth mindset and inclusion: learning from failures, mentoring, creating space for diverse voices. Sample question bank (tailored to Atlassian contexts): - Tell me about a time you used written communication (e.g., a Confluence doc or design RFC) to align a distributed team on a contentious decision. What changed because of that doc? - Describe a situation where you pushed back on a product request to protect customer trust (reliability, data privacy, or security). How did you balance speed and safety? - Walk me through an incident you were part of. What did you do during the incident, and how did you contribute to the postmortem and long-term fix? - Give an example of disagree-and-commit. How did you voice dissent, and how did you ensure the team moved forward effectively? - Tell me about a time you increased transparency (dashboards, Jira workflows, status updates) to unblock cross-functional partners. - Describe a project with ambiguous scope. How did you reduce ambiguity, decide on an MVP, and sequence delivery? - Share a time you mentored someone or elevated team practices (code reviews in Bitbucket, tech design templates, testing standards). What measurable impact followed? - When did you miss the mark for a customer, and how did you make it right? What great answers look like at Atlassian: - Evidence of async-first collaboration: concise artifacts (Confluence pages, ADRs), clear acceptance criteria in Jira, and thoughtful stakeholder mapping. - Specific customer outcomes: reliability or quality metrics improved (e.g., MTTR ↓, crash rate ↓, NPS/support tickets ↓), or meaningful user feedback. - Concrete ownership: proactive risk identification, staged rollouts/feature flags, and closing the loop with retros/postmortems. - Values in action: candid but respectful communication, inclusive decision-making, and willingness to drive change without waiting for permission. Red flags: - Vague impact with no customer or operational metrics. - Over-indexing on individual heroics vs. team play; poor documentation or resistance to async practices. - Blameful incident narratives; lack of learning or follow-through. Interviewer scoring rubric (simplified): - 1: Insufficient evidence; shallow, hypothetical answers. - 2: Some relevant examples but limited ownership/impact or weak collaboration. - 3: Solid examples showing consistent team play and customer focus; clear artifacts. - 4: Strong, repeatable behaviors with measurable outcomes and cross-team influence. - 5: Role-model behaviors that elevate team/company practices and embody Atlassian values across multiple scenarios.
8 minutes
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About This Interview
Interview Type
BEHAVIOURAL
Difficulty Level
3/5
Interview Tips
• Research the company thoroughly
• Practice common questions
• Prepare your STAR method responses
• Dress appropriately for the role