Senior Principal Engineering Manager / Head of Engineering

Atlassian Corp.; Seattle (WA); Hybrid; USD 202,000 - 318,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health and wellbeing resources

Volunteer days

Equity

Job summary

Atlassian in the United States seeks a Senior Principal Engineering Manager / Head of Engineering to lead the Atlassian Guard organization. You will own the engineering strategy, team health, and delivery excellence for Atlassian Guard, leading multiple teams and aligning with Product, Design and GTM stakeholders.

You will shape the multi-year roadmaps, drive cloud security innovation, and ensure high reliability and scale of enterprise-grade products.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of experience in software engineering, with 7+ years in engineering management, including experience as a manager of managers.
• Proven track record of building, scaling, and leading high-performing engineering teams (50+ engineers preferred) in a fast-paced SaaS/cloud environment.
• Deep understanding of cloud security domains — identity & access management, data protection, threat detection, compliance, or related areas.
• Strong technical acumen — ability to engage meaningfully in architectural decisions, system design, and technical trade-offs even as a senior leader.
• Experience delivering enterprise-grade products with high reliability and scale requirements.
• Exceptional communication and influence skills — comfortable presenting to executives, partnering with cross-functional leaders, and inspiring large teams.
• Demonstrated ability to think strategically while maintaining a strong bias for action and execution.
• Experience operating in agile/lean environments and driving continuous improvement in engineering processes.

Responsibilities

• Lead and scale a multi-team engineering organization (managers of managers), including hiring, retention, performance management, and organizational design.
• Build a high-performance culture rooted in psychological safety, accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Develop engineering leaders — coach and mentor engineering managers and senior ICs to grow in their careers and impact.
• Champion engineering excellence across the organization through best practices in architecture, reliability, security, and operational readiness.
• Define and own the engineering vision and technical strategy for Atlassian Guard, ensuring alignment with Atlassian's broader platform and security strategy.
• Partner with Product Management and Design to shape the multi-year product roadmap, making informed trade-offs between customer value, technical investment, and operational sustainability.
• Drive innovation in cloud security — staying ahead of evolving threat landscapes, compliance requirements (SOC2, ISO 27001, FedRAMP, etc.), and industry trends.
• Be accountable for delivery of complex, multi‑quarter programs across multiple teams, ensuring predictability, quality, and customer impact.
• Establish and track key engineering metrics (velocity, reliability, quality, team health) to drive data‑informed decisions.
• Own operational excellence — ensure Atlassian Guard meets the highest standards of availability, performance, and incident response.
• Collaborate across Atlassian with peer engineering leaders, platform teams, security teams, and executive stakeholders to drive alignment and remove blockers.
• Represent Atlassian Guard in senior leadership forums, contributing to company‑wide engineering strategy and investment decisions.
• Partner with Go-to-Market teams (Sales, Customer Success, Solutions Engineering) to ensure the product meets enterprise customer needs and supports business growth.

Skills

Engineering leadership

People management

Strategic thinking

Cloud security knowledge

Executive communication

Job description

Senior Principal Engineering Manager / Head of Engineering

Atlassians can choose where they work – whether in an office, from home, or a combination of the two. That way, Atlassians have more control over supporting their family, personal goals, and other priorities. We can hire people in any country where we have a legal entity.

We are seeking a Senior Principal Engineering Manager / Head of Engineering (M70) to lead the Atlassian Guard engineering organization. Atlassian Guard is our enterprise-grade security product that helps organizations protect their critical data across the Atlassian cloud ecosystem — delivering capabilities such as data loss prevention, threat detection, identity & access management, audit logging, and security policy enforcement.

In this role, you will own the engineering strategy, team health, and delivery excellence for Atlassian Guard. You will lead multiple engineering teams, partner closely with Product, Design, and Go-to-Market stakeholders, and be accountable for building a world‑class security product that scales to serve hundreds of thousands of enterprise customers.

Responsibilities

Engineering Leadership & People Management

Lead and scale a multi-team engineering organization (managers of managers), including hiring, retention, performance management, and organizational design.

Build a high-performance culture rooted in psychological safety, accountability, and continuous improvement.

Develop engineering leaders — coach and mentor engineering managers and senior ICs to grow in their careers and impact.

Champion engineering excellence across the organization through best practices in architecture, reliability, security, and operational readiness.

Define and own the engineering vision and technical strategy for Atlassian Guard, ensuring alignment with Atlassian's broader platform and security strategy.

Partner with Product Management and Design to shape the multi-year product roadmap, making informed trade-offs between customer value, technical investment, and operational sustainability.

Drive innovation in cloud security — staying ahead of evolving threat landscapes, compliance requirements (SOC2, ISO 27001, FedRAMP, etc.), and industry trends.

Execution & Delivery

Be accountable for delivery of complex, multi‑quarter programs across multiple teams, ensuring predictability, quality, and customer impact.

Establish and track key engineering metrics (velocity, reliability, quality, team health) to drive data‑informed decisions.

Own operational excellence — ensure Atlassian Guard meets the highest standards of availability, performance, and incident response.

Cross‑Functional & Organizational Influence

Collaborate across Atlassian with peer engineering leaders, platform teams, security teams, and executive stakeholders to drive alignment and remove blockers.

Represent Atlassian Guard in senior leadership forums, contributing to company‑wide engineering strategy and investment decisions.

Partner with Go-to-Market teams (Sales, Customer Success, Solutions Engineering) to ensure the product meets enterprise customer needs and supports business growth.

Qualifications

15+ years of experience in software engineering, with 7+ years in engineering management, including experience as a manager of managers leading multi‑team organizations.

Proven track record of building, scaling, and leading high‑performing engineering teams (50+ engineers preferred) in a fast‑paced SaaS/cloud environment.

Deep understanding of cloud security domains — identity & access management, data protection, threat detection, compliance, or related areas.

Strong technical acumen — ability to engage meaningfully in architectural decisions, system design, and technical trade‑offs even as a senior leader.

Experience delivering enterprise‑grade products with high reliability and scale requirements.

Exceptional communication and influence skills — comfortable presenting to executives, partnering with cross‑functional leaders, and inspiring large teams.

Demonstrated ability to think strategically while maintaining a strong bias for action and execution.

Experience operating in agile/lean environments and driving continuous improvement in engineering processes.

At Atlassian, we strive to design equitable, explainable, and competitive compensation programs. We follow consistent hiring practices and account for each candidate's skills, knowledge, and experience when setting base pay within the range.

Please visit go.atlassian.com/payzones for more information on which locations are included in each of our geographic pay zones. However, please confirm the zone for your specific location with your recruiter.

This role may also be eligible for benefits, bonuses, commissions, and equity.

In The United States, we have three geographic pay zones. For this role, our current base pay ranges for new hires in each zone are:

Zone A: $243,900 - $318,425

Zone B: $219,510 - $286,583

Zone C: $202,437 - $264,293

Atlassian offers a wide range of perks and benefits designed to support you, your family and to help you engage with your local community. Our offerings include health and wellbeing resources, paid volunteer days, and so much more. To learn more, visit go.atlassian.com/perksandbenefits .

About Atlassian

At Atlassian, we're motivated by a common goal: to unleash the potential of every team. Our software products help teams all over the planet and our solutions are designed for all types of work. Team collaboration through our tools makes what may be impossible alone, possible together.

We believe that the unique contributions of all Atlassians create our success. To ensure that our products and culture continue to incorporate everyone's perspectives and experience, we never discriminate based on race, religion, national origin, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, or marital, veteran, or disability status. All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

To provide you the best experience, we can support with accommodations or adjustments at any stage of the recruitment process. Simply inform our Recruitment team during your conversation with them.

In line with local law, identity verification (which may include use of biometric data) is a condition of employment with Atlassian for employment fraud purposes.

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