# Principal Engineer
**Role:** Software Engineer · **Level:** P60
**Company:** [Atlassian](https://scaleengineer.com/companies/atlassian)
**Difficulty:** Very High
**Salary:** US$180000 - US$250000
**Experience:** 10 - 15
**Timeline:** ~4 days
The Principal Engineer (P60) interview at Atlassian is a rigorous process designed to assess deep technical expertise, leadership capabilities, and strategic thinking. Candidates are expected to demonstrate a strong understanding of software architecture, system design, scalability, and the ability to mentor and guide other engineers. The interview process typically involves multiple rounds, including technical deep dives, system design challenges, and behavioral assessments focused on leadership and collaboration.
Canonical: https://scaleengineer.com/interviews/atlassian/p60-software-engineer
---
## Overall evaluation

- Technical Skills
- Leadership and Impact
- Cultural Fit

## Questions asked

- Describe a time you had to make a significant technical decision with incomplete information. What was your process, and what was the outcome?
- How do you mentor and grow engineers on your team? Provide specific examples.
- Walk me through the architecture of a complex system you designed or significantly contributed to. What were the key challenges and trade-offs?
- Tell me about a time you failed on a project. What did you learn from it?
- How do you balance delivering new features with maintaining system health and addressing technical debt?
- Describe a situation where you had a technical disagreement with a colleague or manager. How did you resolve it?
- How do you approach designing for scalability and resilience in a distributed environment?
- What are your thoughts on the current state of cloud computing and its impact on software development?
- How do you foster a culture of innovation and psychological safety within a team?
- Imagine you need to design a real-time notification system for millions of users. What would be your approach?
- How do you handle ambiguity and changing requirements in a fast-paced environment?
- What are your strategies for ensuring code quality and maintainability in a large codebase?

## Preparation tips

### lists

- Deeply understand Atlassian's products and their technical architecture.
- Review fundamental computer science concepts, data structures, and algorithms.
- Practice system design problems, focusing on scalability, reliability, and trade-offs.
- Prepare to discuss your past projects in detail, highlighting your contributions and impact.
- Brush up on leadership principles and behavioral interview techniques (STAR method).
- Research common challenges and solutions in distributed systems, cloud computing, and relevant technologies.
- Understand Atlassian's company culture and values.

### studyPlan

- {"title":"System Design","longDescription":"Weeks 1-2: Focus on System Design. Study distributed systems concepts, microservices architecture, databases (SQL/NoSQL), caching strategies, message queues, and load balancing. Practice designing large-scale systems like social media feeds, e-commerce platforms, or real-time collaboration tools. Review common design patterns and architectural styles. Consider resources like 'Designing Data-Intensive Applications' by Martin Kleppmann.","shortDescription":"Weeks 1-2: System Design fundamentals and practice."}
- {"title":"Technical Fundamentals","longDescription":"Weeks 3-4: Deep Dive into Technical Expertise. Revisit core computer science principles, data structures, and algorithms. Focus on areas relevant to the specific role (e.g., concurrency, performance optimization, specific programming languages like Java or Go). Work through challenging algorithmic problems on platforms like LeetCode (Hard difficulty).","shortDescription":"Weeks 3-4: Core CS, Data Structures, Algorithms, and language specifics."}
- {"title":"Behavioral and Leadership","longDescription":"Weeks 5-6: Behavioral and Leadership Preparation. Prepare stories using the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) for common leadership, teamwork, conflict resolution, and problem-solving scenarios. Reflect on your career experiences and identify key achievements and learnings. Understand Atlassian's values and how you embody them.","shortDescription":"Weeks 5-6: Behavioral questions and leadership examples (STAR method)."}
- {"title":"Mock Interviews","longDescription":"Week 7: Mock Interviews and Refinement. Conduct mock interviews with peers or mentors, focusing on both technical and behavioral aspects. Get feedback on your communication, problem-solving approach, and clarity. Refine your answers and ensure you can articulate your thoughts concisely and effectively.","shortDescription":"Week 7: Mock interviews and feedback."}

## Location differences

- {"location":"Sydney, Australia","differences":{"tips":["For Sydney/APAC roles: Emphasize experience with large-scale, distributed systems and cloud-native architectures. Highlight contributions to open-source projects if applicable. Showcase experience with Atlassian's core technologies (e.g., Java, Go, JavaScript, AWS/Azure).","For US/EMEA roles: Focus on experience with high-growth environments, rapid iteration, and building products for a global user base. Demonstrate strong understanding of cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Azure) and microservices architectures. Highlight experience with data-intensive applications and machine learning if relevant to the specific team.","Be prepared to discuss your contributions to technical strategy and architectural decisions.","Quantify your impact whenever possible using metrics.","Showcase your ability to think about the 'why' behind technical decisions, not just the 'how'."],"interviewFocus":["Deep technical expertise in specific domains relevant to Atlassian's products (e.g., distributed systems, cloud computing, data engineering, front-end architecture).","Proven ability to lead technical initiatives and drive complex projects to completion.","Strategic thinking and ability to influence technical direction at an organizational level.","Mentorship and people development skills.","Strong communication and stakeholder management abilities.","Experience with agile methodologies and DevOps practices.","Understanding of Atlassian's product suite and their technical underpinnings."],"commonQuestions":["Describe a complex system you designed and the trade-offs you made.","How do you approach mentoring junior engineers?","Tell me about a time you had to influence a team to adopt a new technology or approach.","Discuss a challenging technical problem you solved and your thought process.","How do you ensure the scalability and reliability of large-scale systems?","What are your strategies for managing technical debt?","How do you stay current with emerging technologies and industry trends?","Describe a situation where you had to disagree with a technical decision made by a senior leader. How did you handle it?","How do you foster a culture of innovation and continuous improvement within a team?","Walk me through your process for diagnosing and resolving production issues in a distributed system."]}}
- {"location":"Austin, USA","differences":{"tips":["For US/EMEA roles: Focus on experience with high-growth environments, rapid iteration, and building products for a global user base. Demonstrate strong understanding of cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Azure) and microservices architectures. Highlight experience with data-intensive applications and machine learning if relevant to the specific team.","Be prepared to discuss your contributions to technical strategy and architectural decisions.","Quantify your impact whenever possible using metrics.","Showcase your ability to think about the 'why' behind technical decisions, not just the 'how'."],"interviewFocus":["Deep technical expertise in specific domains relevant to Atlassian's products (e.g., distributed systems, cloud computing, data engineering, front-end architecture).","Proven ability to lead technical initiatives and drive complex projects to completion.","Strategic thinking and ability to influence technical direction at an organizational level.","Mentorship and people development skills.","Strong communication and stakeholder management abilities.","Experience with agile methodologies and DevOps practices.","Understanding of Atlassian's product suite and their technical underpinnings."],"commonQuestions":["Describe a complex system you designed and the trade-offs you made.","How do you approach mentoring junior engineers?","Tell me about a time you had to influence a team to adopt a new technology or approach.","Discuss a challenging technical problem you solved and your thought process.","How do you ensure the scalability and reliability of large-scale systems?","What are your strategies for managing technical debt?","How do you stay current with emerging technologies and industry trends?","Describe a situation where you had to disagree with a technical decision made by a senior leader. How did you handle it?","How do you foster a culture of innovation and continuous improvement within a team?","Walk me through your process for diagnosing and resolving production issues in a distributed system."]}}
- {"location":"Warsaw, Poland","differences":{"tips":["For US/EMEA roles: Focus on experience with high-growth environments, rapid iteration, and building products for a global user base. Demonstrate strong understanding of cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Azure) and microservices architectures. Highlight experience with data-intensive applications and machine learning if relevant to the specific team.","Be prepared to discuss your contributions to technical strategy and architectural decisions.","Quantify your impact whenever possible using metrics.","Showcase your ability to think about the 'why' behind technical decisions, not just the 'how'."],"interviewFocus":["Deep technical expertise in specific domains relevant to Atlassian's products (e.g., distributed systems, cloud computing, data engineering, front-end architecture).","Proven ability to lead technical initiatives and drive complex projects to completion.","Strategic thinking and ability to influence technical direction at an organizational level.","Mentorship and people development skills.","Strong communication and stakeholder management abilities.","Experience with agile methodologies and DevOps practices.","Understanding of Atlassian's product suite and their technical underpinnings."],"commonQuestions":["Describe a complex system you designed and the trade-offs you made.","How do you approach mentoring junior engineers?","Tell me about a time you had to influence a team to adopt a new technology or approach.","Discuss a challenging technical problem you solved and your thought process.","How do you ensure the scalability and reliability of large-scale systems?","What are your strategies for managing technical debt?","How do you stay current with emerging technologies and industry trends?","Describe a situation where you had to disagree with a technical decision made by a senior leader. How did you handle it?","How do you foster a culture of innovation and continuous improvement within a team?","Walk me through your process for diagnosing and resolving production issues in a distributed system."]}}

## Round 1: Coding and Algorithms
**Type:** Technical Coding Interview · **Difficulty:** High · **Duration:** 60 min
Coding problems focusing on data structures and algorithms.
This round focuses on your core technical skills. You will be asked to solve one or two coding problems, typically involving data structures and algorithms. The interviewer will assess your ability to write clean, efficient, and well-tested code, as well as your problem-solving approach and communication during the process. Expect questions that require you to think about edge cases and optimize your solutions.
**Interviewers look for:** Clean, efficient, and well-reasoned code.; Clear communication of thought process.; Ability to identify edge cases and test thoroughly.; Understanding of time and space complexity.
**Evaluation criteria:** Technical problem-solving skills.; Understanding of data structures and algorithms.; Coding proficiency.; Ability to think critically and logically.
**Common rejection reasons:** Lack of depth in technical knowledge.; Inability to articulate design choices and trade-offs.; Poor problem-solving approach.; Difficulty in handling ambiguity.; Lack of leadership or mentorship experience.; Poor communication skills.
## Questions

- Given a binary tree, find the lowest common ancestor of two given nodes in the tree.
- Implement a function to find the k-th largest element in an unsorted array.
- Design and implement a data structure that supports insert, delete, search, and getRandom in O(1) average time.

## Preparation tips

- Practice coding problems on platforms like LeetCode, HackerRank, or Coderbyte.
- Focus on understanding the underlying data structures and algorithms.
- Be prepared to explain your thought process clearly.
- Practice writing code on a whiteboard or in a shared editor.
- Review common algorithms and their complexities.

## Round 2: System Design
**Type:** System Design Interview · **Difficulty:** Very High · **Duration:** 75 min
Design a scalable and reliable system, discussing trade-offs.
This round assesses your ability to design complex, scalable, and reliable systems. You will be presented with an open-ended problem (e.g., design Twitter's feed, design a URL shortener) and expected to lead the discussion. Focus on requirements gathering, high-level design, component breakdown, data modeling, API design, and discussing trade-offs. Consider aspects like scalability, availability, consistency, latency, and cost.
**Interviewers look for:** A structured approach to problem-solving.; Clear articulation of design choices and justifications.; Consideration of various components (databases, caching, APIs, etc.).; Ability to identify and mitigate risks and failure points.; Understanding of scalability patterns and techniques.
**Evaluation criteria:** System design and architecture skills.; Understanding of distributed systems principles.; Ability to handle scale, reliability, and availability.; Consideration of trade-offs.; Problem decomposition and abstraction.
**Common rejection reasons:** Inability to design scalable and reliable systems.; Poor consideration of trade-offs.; Lack of clarity in design choices.; Failure to address potential failure points.; Not considering operational aspects (monitoring, deployment).; Over-simplification of complex problems.
## Questions

- Design a system like Google Maps.
- Design a rate limiter for an API.
- Design a distributed cache system.

## Preparation tips

- Study common system design patterns and architectures.
- Practice designing various large-scale systems.
- Understand concepts like CAP theorem, eventual consistency, load balancing, caching, and database sharding.
- Be prepared to draw diagrams and explain your design clearly.
- Think about operational concerns like monitoring, logging, and deployment.

## Round 3: Leadership and Behavioral
**Type:** Behavioral and Leadership Interview · **Difficulty:** High · **Duration:** 60 min
Behavioral questions assessing leadership, mentorship, and collaboration.
This round focuses on your behavioral and leadership competencies. You'll be asked questions about your past experiences, focusing on how you've led teams, mentored engineers, handled conflicts, driven initiatives, and collaborated with others. Use the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) to structure your answers. The interviewer wants to understand your leadership style, your ability to influence, and how you align with Atlassian's culture and values.
**Interviewers look for:** Examples of taking initiative and ownership.; Ability to mentor and guide junior engineers.; Effective communication and conflict resolution skills.; Demonstrated ability to work cross-functionally.; Understanding of team dynamics and how to foster a positive environment.
**Evaluation criteria:** Leadership and influence.; Mentorship and team development.; Collaboration and communication.; Problem-solving and decision-making.; Alignment with Atlassian's values.
**Common rejection reasons:** Lack of leadership experience or potential.; Inability to influence or mentor others.; Poor communication or collaboration skills.; Not demonstrating alignment with company values.; Difficulty in handling conflict or challenging situations.; Lack of strategic thinking.
## Questions

- Tell me about a time you had to lead a project through significant challenges. What was your approach?
- Describe a situation where you had to influence a team or stakeholder to adopt your technical vision.
- How do you handle underperformance on your team?
- Tell me about a time you disagreed with your manager. How did you handle it?

## Preparation tips

- Prepare specific examples using the STAR method for common behavioral questions.
- Reflect on your leadership experiences, successes, and failures.
- Understand Atlassian's core values and how you demonstrate them.
- Think about how you mentor and develop others.
- Be ready to discuss your career aspirations and why you're interested in Atlassian.

## Round 4: Strategic Leadership
**Type:** Executive/Strategic Interview · **Difficulty:** Very High · **Duration:** 60 min
Strategic thinking, business alignment, and executive presence.
This final round is typically with a senior leader (Director or VP) and focuses on your strategic thinking, leadership impact, and ability to influence at a higher level. You'll discuss your career vision, how you approach technical strategy, and how you align technical decisions with business objectives. Be prepared to discuss your experience in driving significant technical initiatives and your perspective on the future of technology relevant to Atlassian.
**Interviewers look for:** Ability to think beyond immediate tasks and consider long-term implications.; Understanding of how technology drives business value.; Experience in shaping technical strategy.; Strong communication and presentation skills.; Proactive identification of opportunities and risks.
**Evaluation criteria:** Strategic thinking and vision.; Impact on business goals.; Technical leadership at an organizational level.; Ability to influence senior stakeholders.; Innovation and forward-thinking.
**Common rejection reasons:** Lack of strategic vision.; Inability to connect technical decisions to business goals.; Poor communication with senior leadership.; Not demonstrating a proactive approach to innovation.; Failure to consider the broader impact of technical decisions.
## Questions

- What is your vision for the future of collaboration software, and how can Atlassian lead in this space?
- Describe a time you had to make a difficult strategic technical decision that had significant business implications.
- How do you foster innovation within engineering teams and ensure that innovative ideas are brought to fruition?
- What are the biggest technical challenges facing Atlassian today, and how would you address them?

## Preparation tips

- Understand Atlassian's business strategy and product roadmap.
- Think about industry trends and how they might impact Atlassian.
- Prepare to discuss your vision for technical leadership and innovation.
- Be ready to articulate the business impact of your past technical contributions.
- Practice presenting your ideas concisely and persuasively.