Company interview guide
Atlassian interview process and practice questions
Atlassian, which makes Jira, Confluence and Trello, publishes how it interviews engineers: a coding interview, a system design interview, a manager interview and a separate values interview, usually with someone from outside the team. Candidates commonly report that the values interview carries real weight, and Atlassian says a hiring committee reviews the interviewers' feedback before a decision.
As candidates commonly report it; it varies by team, level and year. Last reviewed 18 October 2026.
The interview process
- 1Recruiter screen
- 2Technical interviews: coding and system design
- 3A values interview
- 4Hiring manager / management interview
What interviewers listen for
- Open company, no nonsense
- Build with heart and balance
- Don't let the customer down
- Play, as a team
- Be the change you seek
- Clear reasoning about trade-offs in code and design
- How you collaborate and communicate, including with people outside engineering
Behavioral questions
Tell me about a time you shared bad news openly.
A good answer covers
- What the news was and who needed to hear it
- Why you shared it early and plainly instead of softening or delaying it
- How people reacted and what was done about the problem
Tell me about a time you balanced speed with doing it right.
A good answer covers
- The deadline pressure and what doing it right meant in that case
- What you shipped first and what you deliberately held back or fixed later
- How it worked out, and whether you'd strike the same balance again
Tell me about something you changed for the better at work.
A good answer covers
- What wasn't working and who it affected
- How you got others on board rather than changing it alone
- What improved, with a number or a clear before-and-after
Tell me about a time a customer problem made you change your team's plans.
A good answer covers
- The customer, the problem and how you heard about it
- What you dropped or delayed, and how you agreed that with your team
- What the customer got and what you learned about planning
Tell me about a team success you're proud of. How did you help others do their best work?
A good answer covers
- The goal and who was on the team
- Credit to others, plus a clear account of your own part
- How you supported teammates: reviews, unblocking, sharing knowledge
Tell me about working with teammates in other time zones. How did you keep work visible and decisions clear?
A good answer covers
- The setup: who was where and what you were building
- Written habits you used: docs, tickets, decision notes, async updates
- A moment it nearly went wrong and how you fixed it
Role and technical questions
How would you design notifications for an issue tracker like Jira, so people hear about changes that matter without being flooded?
A good answer covers
- Clarifying who gets notified and through which channels
- Events flowing through a queue, with user preferences and batching or digests
- Handling bursts such as bulk edits, and measuring whether people find it useful
Talk me through how you'd design a shared page editor where several people can edit the same page at once.
A good answer covers
- How edits are sent and merged, and what happens when two people change the same text
- Saving versions so changes can be undone or reviewed
- Keeping it fast for large pages and working when a connection drops
Walk me through how you'd structure the code for a simple rate limiter so it's easy to change and test.
A good answer covers
- A clear interface first, then one algorithm such as a token bucket
- Separating the limiting logic from storage and time, so it can be tested
- Edge cases: bursts, many users, and running on more than one server
Walk me through a past project: who you worked with, the hardest technical problem and the business reason for the work.
A good answer covers
- Why the business needed it, in a sentence
- The hardest technical problem and the options you weighed
- Who you worked with and how you'd do it differently now
A release you shipped has broken a feature for a large customer. What do you do in the first hour, and afterwards?
A good answer covers
- Limiting the damage first: roll back or switch off the change
- Telling the customer and your team honestly what is happening
- A blameless review afterwards and the fix that stops it recurring
Why Atlassian? Fit and HR questions
Why Atlassian? Which of its products have you used, and what would you improve in one?
A good answer covers
- A reason linked to the team or product, not only the brand
- A real experience with Jira, Confluence, Trello or another product
- One specific improvement and who it would help
Which Atlassian value means most to you, and when have you acted on it?
A good answer covers
- One value, named once
- A short, true example from your own work
- Why that way of working matters to you
Tips
- The values interview carries real weight: prepare a story for each value.
- Atlassian's engineering guide says interviewers care more about how you reason through trade-offs than about a missing line of code, so talk through your choices.
- The coding interview covers code design as well as data structures: think about naming, structure and how you'd test what you write.
- In system design, ask about users, reliability and cost before drawing boxes, and expect follow-ups that change the constraints.
- Values interviewers often come from outside engineering, so keep stories free of jargon. Credit your team, then be clear about your own part.
- In the manager interview, say so if you don't know something; Atlassian's own guide recommends it.
Practise it out loud
A mock interview asks the way Atlassian's interviewers are known to, follows up on your answers and gives you a report. The warm-up is free, needs no account and checks five of these questions as you answer.
About this guide
Written by Orbit from Atlassian's own public pages and what candidates commonly report. Orbit isn't affiliated with Atlassian. The questions are practice questions in the style of its interviews, not questions taken from them. Processes change, so check the job post and what your recruiter tells you.