What is the Atlassian coding style?

Medium-leaning with some hard. The expected pattern is to solve a brute force first and then explicitly optimise, reasoning aloud about time/space trade-offs and writing clean, readable code.

Atlassian Software Engineer Interview

Two coding rounds, a system-design round in a drawing tool, and a first-class, pass/fail Values interview run by an off-team interviewer.

Product company Global Web-verified 2026-07

Start the Atlassian mock interview → See all boards

A free AI panel interview that questions you in Atlassian’s style, follows up when an answer is thin, and returns a scored, evidence-backed report — seeded from your own practice history on Wrexa Edge.

The Atlassian interview, in brief

Atlassian's software-engineer loop is four to five rounds: two coding rounds, one system design, a managerial/behavioural round, and — most distinctively — a dedicated Values interview run as a first-class, pass/fail gate. Candidates regularly clear the technical screens but are rejected on values or manager fit, so the Values round is genuinely load-bearing here, not a formality.

A recruiter call is followed by a technical phone screen (brute force then optimise), then coding interviews, a system-design round conducted in a drawing tool, the Values interview (run by a trained interviewer usually not on the hiring team), and a managerial/behavioural round.

Interview rounds

1. Recruiter call ~25–30 min

Projects, product interest, and clean-code / debugging practices.
2. Technical phone screen ~60 min

One or two LeetCode-style problems; think-aloud, brute force then optimise.
3. Coding interview(s) ~60 min each (usually 2)

Clean, maintainable code with explicit optimisation and trade-off reasoning.
4. System design ~60 min · drawing tool

Object-level for new grads; full HLD (API, DB schema, caching, scaling) for SDE-2+.
5. Values interview ~45–60 min · off-team interviewer

A behavioural, STAR-driven pass/fail round mapped to Atlassian's five values.
6. Managerial / behavioural Team fit

Project depth and leadership signals.

Coding & DSA topics

Hash mapsQueues & stacksTree traversalGraph algorithms (DFS/BFS)String manipulationDynamic programmingBrute force → optimisation

System design

One dedicated ~60-minute round in a drawing tool of your choice. For new grads it leans toward a scoped-down or object-level design; for experienced (SDE-2+) it is full HLD — API design, DB schema, caching, microservices, and scaling. Reported prompts include a collaborative doc (Google Sheets), a tagging system, a colour-picker app with access control, and a web crawler.

Behavioural round

The distinctive Values interview is mapped to Atlassian's five official values — "Open company, no bullshit"; "Build with heart and balance"; "Don't #@!% the customer"; "Play, as a team"; and "Be the change you seek" — and run by a trained interviewer usually not on the hiring team, to keep it unbiased. It is fully behavioural and STAR-driven; the strong advice is to pre-map one or two concrete stories to each of the five values.

Representative question categories

Patterns in Atlassian’s style — not verbatim proprietary questions.

Hash map / queue / stack — Design-flavoured coding with maps and queues.
Trees & graphs — Traversal (DFS/BFS) and connectivity problems.
System design (HLD) — Design a collaborative doc (Sheets-like), a tagging system, or a web crawler.
Values — Open company — "A time you delivered difficult feedback to a colleague."
Values — Don't screw the customer — "A time you chose the customer's good over business convenience."
Values — Be the change — "A launch that went wrong and what you did next."

How to prepare

Do

Pre-map one or two crisp STAR stories to EACH of Atlassian's five values — the Values round is a real gate.
In coding, always start with a brute force, then explicitly optimise and discuss the time/space trade-off.
Treat the Values interviewer (often off-team) as seriously as the technical rounds.
For design, use the drawing tool to reason about the API, data model, and caching.

Avoid

Acing the coding rounds but under-preparing the Values interview.
Jumping to the optimal solution without showing the brute-force reasoning.
Values stories with no genuine tension or personal action.

Who can apply

New grads (early-careers program, "TEAM Camp" onboarding) through experienced levels; the loop is broadly consistent across levels, with depth scaling by level. No published CGPA cutoff.

Atlassian interview FAQ

What is the Atlassian Values interview?: A dedicated, first-class, pass/fail behavioural round mapped to Atlassian's five values, run by a trained interviewer usually not on the hiring team (to keep it unbiased). It is STAR-driven, and strong technical candidates are regularly rejected on it — so it is genuinely load-bearing.
What are Atlassian's five values?: Open company, no bullshit; Build with heart and balance; Don't #@!% the customer; Play, as a team; and Be the change you seek. Prepare a concrete STAR story for each.
How many rounds does Atlassian have?: Typically four to five: a technical phone screen, one or two coding rounds, a system-design round in a drawing tool, the Values interview, and a managerial/behavioural round.
What is the Atlassian coding style?: Medium-leaning with some hard. The expected pattern is to solve a brute force first and then explicitly optimise, reasoning aloud about time/space trade-offs and writing clean, readable code.

Practise now

Rehearse the full loop with an AI panel modelled on Atlassian’s process, in text, voice, or video.

Start the Atlassian mock interview →

Other company interviews

Verified from

Wrexa Edge is an independent exam-prep platform and is not affiliated with, authorised by, or endorsed by Atlassian. This guide is based on publicly documented interview practice; it does not reproduce any employer’s internal rubric or question bank, and it does not predict a hiring outcome.