Senior Principal Software Engineer

Atlassian; Seattle (WA); Remote; USD 198,000 - 319,000; Full time

Job summary

Atlassian seeks a Senior Principal Software Engineer to lead strategic engineering initiatives in a flexible, distributed environment. This role involves mentoring junior engineers, tackling complex problems, and driving technical direction across teams, emphasizing scalability, reliability, and operational excellence.

Benefits

Health and wellbeing resources

Paid volunteer days

Equitable and competitive compensation programs

Qualifications

• 12+ years of backend software development experience.
• Expert in at least one major backend programming language (Kotlin, Java, Go, Rust, or Python).
• Experience leading technical strategy in large engineering orgs.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate on technical direction and OKRs for Central AI organization.
• Drive complex architecture challenges and apply standards for new projects.
• Mentor engineers and promote an open, innovative culture.

Skills

Proficiency in system design

Performance optimization

Distributed systems principles

Mentoring

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field

Job description

Join to apply for the Senior Principal Software Engineer role at Atlassian

Join to apply for the Senior Principal Software Engineer role at Atlassian

Working at Atlassian

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. Interviews and onboarding are conducted virtually, a part of being a distributed-first company.

Overview

Working at Atlassian

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. Interviews and onboarding are conducted virtually, a part of being a distributed-first company.

Responsibilities

What's the Senior Principal Engineer role? As an engineer well into your career, we know you're an expert at what you do and have a breadth of experience across multiple backend technologies. You take pride in working across departments to deliver transformational solutions that scale an entire company. You enjoy working with other Principals and more junior members look up to and sharing your expertise with others... That's why we're placing a heavy emphasis on leaning on your expertise to take on a high level of responsibility while being a role model and mentor to others on the team.

• Collaborate with partner teams and internal customers to help define technical direction and OKRs for the Central AI organization.
• Regularly tackle the largest and most complex problems on the team, from technical design to implementation and launch
• Partner across engineering teams to take on company-wide initiatives spanning multiple projects
• Routinely tackle complex architecture challenges and apply architectural standards and start using them on new projects
• Work across senior engineering and product leaders to build strategy and design solutions to earn customers trust and business
• Own key OKRs and end-to-end outcomes of critical projects in a microservices environment
• Champion best practices and innovative techniques for scalability, reliability, and performance optimizations.
• Own engineering and operational excellence for the health of our systems and processes. Proactively drive opportunities for continuous improvements and own key operational metrics.
• Continually drive developer productivity initiatives to ensure that we unleash the potential of our own teams.
• Help hire and mentor engineers to build an open, innovative and operationally responsible culture.
  
  
  

Qualifications

• Preferred by not required: 5+ years of hands on experience related to one of these systems: web crawler, link graph mining, web data ingress system, scheduler system.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field.
• 12+ years of experience in backend software development, with a focus on distributed systems and large-scale storage solutions.
• Proficiency in system design, performance optimization, and cost-efficient architecture for exabyte-scale storage.
• Expertise in at least one major backend programming language (Kotlin, Java, Go, Rust, or Python).
• Experience leading technical strategy and architectural decisions in large, multi-team engineering organizations.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems principles, including consistency models, replication, sharding, and consensus algorithms
• Experience mentoring senior engineers and driving high-impact engineering initiatives.
  
  
  

Compensation

At Atlassian, we strive to design equitable, explainable, and competitive compensation programs. To support this goal, the baseline of our range is higher than that of the typical market range, but in turn we expect to hire most candidates near this baseline. Base pay within the range is ultimately determined by a candidate's skills, expertise, or experience. 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: $239,000 - $318,600

Zone B: $215,100 - $286,700

Zone C: $198,300 - $264,400

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

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.

Benefits & Perks

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.

To learn more about our culture and hiring process, visit go.atlassian.com/crh .

Seniority level

• Seniority level

  Mid-Senior level

Employment type

• Employment type

  Full-time

Job function

• Job function

  Engineering and Information Technology

• Industries

  Software Development

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