Principal Backend Engineer — Lead Large-Scale Systems

Atlassian; Auckland; On-site; NZD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Atlassian is seeking a Principal Backend Software Engineer to join a world-class team that builds Jira, Confluence, Trello, and Bitbucket. You will own end-to-end technical design, mentor engineers, and drive architectural excellence while delivering scalable backend systems that empower customers globally.

We value deep technical leadership, hands-on delivery, and a commitment to developer productivity, with flexible work options across locations and time zones.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in senior software leadership roles across the full software lifecycle.
• Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science or equivalent.
• Expertise in Java, Python, Kotlin, Go, or Scala.

Responsibilities

• Tackle the largest and most complex problems from design to launch.
• Deliver solutions used by multiple teams and products.
• Plan approaches for large projects and coordiate execution.
• Tackle complex architectures and adopt architectural standards.
• Lead code reviews and fix high-risk bugs with quality focus.
• Set the standard for meaningful code reviews across teams.
• Collaborate across engineering to drive company-wide initiatives.
• Mentor junior engineers and share depth of knowledge.

Skills

Java

Python

NodeJS

Kotlin

Cloud (AWS/GCP/Azure)

CI/CD

Mentoring

Architectural design

Education

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or equivalent

Job description

Atlassian is seeking a Principal Backend Software Engineer to join a world-class team that builds Jira, Confluence, Trello, and Bitbucket. You will own end-to-end technical design, mentor engineers, and drive architectural excellence while delivering scalable backend systems that empower customers globally.

We value deep technical leadership, hands-on delivery, and a commitment to developer productivity, with flexible work options across locations and time zones.