Atlassian interview preparation
“Why do you want to work at Atlassian?” — how to answer it well
Atlassian's Values round is a separate, scored interview. Candidates who treat it as a formality lose offers there even after strong technical rounds. Here is how to prepare it properly.
Atlassian runs an explicit Values interview, so the answer to "why Atlassian" should name a value you can evidence — most often 'Open company, no bullshit', 'Play as a team' or 'Don't #@!% the customer' — with a story attached. Add a reason tied to Atlassian's distributed TEAM Anywhere model and to the specific product you'd work on.
Atlassian at a glance
- Industry
- Team collaboration software
- Base
- Sydney / San Francisco (TEAM Anywhere)
- Work model
- TEAM Anywhere — distributed
- Typical process
- 3–5 weeks, 4–5 stages
What Atlassian is actually scoring
Open company, no bullshit
Give an example of surfacing bad news early. Interviewers listen for whether you shared it before you had a fix.
Play as a team
Credit-sharing is graded. Use 'we' where it's true and be precise about your own contribution where it isn't.
Don't #@!% the customer
A decision where you protected the customer against internal pressure. Name what it cost.
Be the change you seek
Something broken you fixed without a mandate — process, tooling, docs. Small and real beats big and vague.
Sample answers by candidate type
Adapt these — never recite them. Interviewers at Atlassian follow up on every claim, and a borrowed story collapses on the second question. Swap in your own specifics and keep the structure.
“The values round is actually part of my answer. 'Open company, no bullshit' is the one I've had to fight for: at my last job I flagged that our migration estimate was off by a factor of two before anyone asked, and it was uncomfortable and it was also the reason we didn't miss the customer date. I want to work somewhere that's the default rather than the exception. Product-wise, I want to work on Jira's performance surface — I've administered it for a 1,500-person org and I have a very specific list of things I'd want to fix, which is a better reason to join than admiration.”
“Because Atlassian sells to teams, and team dynamics are the problem I find most interesting. The product decisions are really organizational-behaviour decisions — a default in Jira changes how thousands of teams argue about scope. I also want the distributed context specifically: TEAM Anywhere means the company has to solve its own collaboration problem in public, and that's the best possible feedback loop for someone building collaboration software.”
“I've been the admin on the other end. I ran Confluence and Jira for a mid-size company, which means I know the difference between a documentation gap and a genuine product limitation, and I know how much of support work is actually teaching. 'Don't #@!% the customer' is the value I'd point at: my instinct is to tell a customer the honest limitation and the workaround, rather than route them into a ticket loop, and that's easier to do at a company that has written the principle down.”
Follow-up questions to prepare
Tell me about a time you gave difficult feedback.
Open company, no bullshit. Show directness plus care — what you said, and how you checked the relationship afterwards.
Describe a conflict on your team.
Focus on the resolution mechanism and what you conceded, not on being right.
Which Atlassian value resonates most?
Pick one, be honest about a value you're still working on, and have the story ready for both.
Mistakes that cost candidates the offer
- Treating the Values interview as a soft round — it is scored and it eliminates candidates.
- Listing all five values instead of evidencing one or two.
- No hands-on familiarity with any Atlassian product when you've clearly had access to one.
Atlassian interview FAQs
How do I answer "why do you want to work at Atlassian"?
Name a specific Atlassian value with a real story behind it, add a product-level reason grounded in hands-on use, and connect it to the distributed TEAM Anywhere way of working.
What is the Atlassian Values interview?
A dedicated, scored interview round assessing fit against Atlassian's five company values through behavioural stories. Prepare one strong example per value.
Is Atlassian remote?
Atlassian's TEAM Anywhere policy lets most employees work remotely within countries where it has a legal entity.
Other company guides
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