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Atlassian Software Engineer Interview: Stages, Coding in Your IDE and How to Prepare

How Atlassian's software engineer interviews work: two 60-minute coding rounds in your own IDE (with tests), system design, management and values interviews, the hiring committee and team match, with original practice questions and solutions. Free, no sign-up.

Facts checked October 14, 20269 min readSoftware engineering

Atlassian at a glance

Interviews
5, in 3 stages
Coding rounds
2 × 60 min, code must run
Values round
45 min
After the loop
Hiring committee, then team match

The stages

  1. 1Stage 1Two coding interviews
  2. 2Stage 2System design
  3. 3Stage 3Management + values
  4. 4Hiring committeeReviews all feedback
  5. 5Team matchPick a team, then offer

Interview time, all stages

  • Coding2 × 60 min
  • System design60 min
  • Management60 min
  • Values45 min

From Atlassian's backend engineering interview guide (P30-P50).

Atlassian (the company behind Jira, Confluence and Trello) publishes more about its engineering interviews than most: role-by-role PDF guides that give every round's length and what it assesses. The standout: you write and run real code in your own IDE, and testing matters. This guide follows Atlassian's backend and frontend guides for software engineers (levels P30 to P50).

How the process runs

Five interviews, scheduled in three stages. After each stage your recruiter tells you whether you're moving on.

Step through: Atlassian's engineering interviews (P30 to P50)

Step 1 of 5

Stage 1: two coding interviews (60 min each)

You write and run code in your own IDE, sharing your screen. Backend-leaning roles get a data structures interview; frontend-leaning roles get a browser coding interview. The engineering page describes the two coding parts as data structures and code design.

Coding interviews: real code, real tests

What Atlassian's guides say, and what it means for your prep:

  • Use your own IDE and language. Pick the language you're most comfortable with and have a project, your favourite test framework and Zoom ready before the call. If you can't set up an IDE, ask your coordinator for a CodePair environment in advance.
  • Your code has to run. This isn't a whiteboard exercise. Using a debugger is welcome and encouraged.
  • Testing is crucial. Atlassian strongly recommends brushing up on testing, in particular test-driven development (TDD). Write a couple of tests early, not only at the end.
  • Show more than one solution. Explain the options you considered and why you chose one.
  • Communicate throughout. Atlassian says how you think matters as much as the result, and that missing a line isn't a deal-breaker.
  • They also assess adaptability, navigating blockers and communication style: expect requirements to change mid-interview.

Quick check

Your function works on the example. Ten minutes are left. What best matches Atlassian's coding guidance?

System design

60 minutes on technical depth, breadth and judgement: performance, reliability and, per the engineering page, constraints like cost. Ask clarifying questions first, start with fundamentals, then build up. Keep the customer in mind and say how your design performs and scales. Follow-up questions may make the problem harder or easier to see how you adapt.

Good practice topics in Atlassian's world: notifications for issue updates, a permission system for shared pages, real-time collaborative editing, or search across millions of issues.

Practice questions (original)

Written in the spirit of Atlassian's products (issues, sprints, labels). In a real Atlassian round you'd write tests too, so the last two solutions include a few.

Practice question

Which ticket first?

medium

Tickets can block each other: ("A", "B") means A must be done before B. Given the tickets and the blocks, return an order to do them in, choosing the alphabetically smallest ready ticket whenever there's a choice. If the blocks form a cycle, return None.

Practice question

A per-user rate limiter

medium

Design a RateLimiter(limit, window_seconds) with allow(user, now) that returns True if the user may make a request at time now (in seconds), and False otherwise. Each user may make at most limit requests in any window_seconds-long window. Then write tests for it.

Practice question

Label counter

easy

Build a LabelCounter for issue labels: add(label) when a label is put on an issue, remove(label) when it's taken off (raise an error if that label isn't on any issue), and top(k) for the k most-used labels, most used first, ties alphabetical. Write tests as you go.

Management interview

A 60-minute, structured, scenario-based interview with an engineering manager. Atlassian says it digs into four areas, so prepare a project story for each:

AreaPrepare a story about
Drive outcomes across the software development life cycleTaking a feature from idea to production, and what you measured
Apply and share lessons learnedA mistake or surprise, what you changed, and how you shared it
Manage conflictA disagreement on design or priorities, and how it was resolved
Take initiative, lead and inspireSomething you started without being asked

Atlassian suggests projects where you had measurable impact, learned lessons and felt stretched. They don't have to be your best or most recent ones.

Values interview

45 minutes of behavioural questions on Atlassian's five values. These example prompts paraphrase Atlassian's own guide:

Flip cards · 0 of 5 revealed

Use STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) and be honest about what went wrong. Two of the prompts ask directly about mistakes and conflict.

A 4-week prep plan

Step through: Four weeks to interview-ready

Step 1 of 4

Week 1: Set up and code

Get your IDE, test runner and debugger ready in your chosen language. Solve one problem a day TDD-style: a failing test first, then the code.

Keep going

Sources

Checked on October 14, 2026. Hiring processes change, so confirm details with your recruiter.

Nokku.ai is not affiliated with or endorsed by Atlassian. Company names are used only to describe their publicly documented hiring process. Practice questions are original.