The top 5 traits Atlassian is seeking in new engineering hires in 2019

Atlassian’s collaboration tools serve more than 125,000 customers worldwide, and as our customer base grows, we’re continually pursuing elegant solutions to thorny new challenges. For example, we recently completed a massive cloud migration for two of our core applications, Confluence and Jira—a transformation that took three calendar years—with no disruption time to active users. As we continue to scale, our technical challenges will only get more difficult—and, while hiring wisely across all of our teams has always been paramount to our success, I wanted to pay particular attention to what we’re looking for in our engineering department as we work to fill hundreds of new roles across 10 global offices.

While many companies focus solely on a developer’s education and Java skills, our recruiting strategy looks at candidates through a holistic lens that assesses not just their technical skills, but their soft skills and values alignment as well.

To drill down in more detail on what we’re looking for, I sat down for a chat with Christian Macolino, Recruiting Lead, Engineering; and Zak Islam, Head of Jira Platform & Projects Engineering. Here’s what’s on the top of their wish lists for new Atlassian recruits this year:

1. You can demonstrate learning agility.

“We want to hire folks that really can demonstrate their ability to learn new technology, keep up with new technology, adapt with new technology as it’s emerging, and of course, for their ability to solve problems."

Programming languages are important—but your mindset is even more critical to how we assess your capabilities, demonstrated through what we call “learning agility.”

Our core stack is built on Java and JavaScript, however, we’ll use different technologies or techniques that make the most sense to solve our most pressing technical challenges, whether that be Kotlin, Go, Reactive programming or Clojure just to name a few. That said, we don’t care as much whether you work with Atlassian-aligned frameworks or languages in your day job; we care that you’ve taken the time to learn about them and understand which is the right fit for certain scenarios, and can speak knowledgeably about that in our interview.

“We want to hire folks that really can demonstrate their ability to learn new technology, keep up with new technology, adapt with new technology as it’s emerging, and of course their ability to solve problems,” says Zak.

2. Development is more than a day job to you—you have a genuine passion for coding.

We’re looking for developers with what we call the product gene. We want developers who genuinely love to code and solve complex technical challenges. Those who find great meaning in their technical work tend to stick out.

How do we find the developers that thrive here? A potential indicator is how active you are in contributing to the open-source community. When we see that you’re not only developing but also committing and contributing to open-source projects, you demonstrate a passion for coding and for collaboration that goes beyond your day job. You want to tackle new challenges and build things that genuinely help people, and are confident enough in your code to share it with others openly for feedback and collaboration.

“What the data tells us is those that have the most innovative or are utilizing the most innovative languages and frameworks tend to contribute more to the open source community,” says Christian.

Interestingly, we’ve also discovered that nonbinary and transgender individuals contribute at disproportionately high rates to the open-source community, as Stackoverflow’s Developer Survey also points out. We celebrate diverse backgrounds, and our team works to ensure that Atlassian is an inclusive and welcoming community.

3. You have a true desire to collaborate.

All of our products are focused on building better collaboration processes, so it’s no surprise that we hire team players who like working in a flat, open structure and can collaborate across departments.

“We want to work with people who have what we call the product gene,” says Christian. “We look for people who have worked with product, who have worked with designers. We look for people who've worked in cross-functional teams.”

Open source contributions, again, “tie into someone that enjoys working in a safe, collaborative and flat structure, which very much aligns to our value stack at Atlassian.”

4. You have empathy and concern for the end user.

At Atlassian, everything we do is built around improving the experience for the end user of our products, and we want to make sure our entire engineering team embraces that mindset. After all, one of our core values is, “Don’t #@!% the customer.”

“When we recruit, we're trying to determine if an engineer leads with the customer in mind rather than the outcome of the customer's work being an afterthought. We want our engineers to really think about how the customer will be using the product, and build a delightful experience,” says Zak.

I agree! To Zak’s point, we’d rather hire developers who take the time to deeply analyze their team’s code and ensure that it is flawless before releasing it. If you’ve spent a lot of time working in a Test Driven Development (TDD) environment, you’ll likely be a good fit, as it shows the attention to detail we strive for.

Above all, we’re looking for product engineers that are very interested in the experience of the customer, building at scale on the backend, and ensuring that every touch point with the product is meaningful and consistent.

5. You bring your authentic self to whatever you do.

Our core values are very important to us, and we look at how they play into all of our hiring decisions across the board, as my colleague Manoj has previously discussed. At the same time, we’re not looking for people to fit a static mold. We’re looking for engineers who can add to our culture, rather than serve as part of an echo chamber.

Atlassian is a growing, dynamic company and we understand that it’s going to look very different from the way it does now in 10 years, or even in two years. Rather than identifying engineers from specific companies, schools, or backgrounds, we want people who can bring new perspectives and ideas to the table (cognitive diversity), be honest about where our culture or work isn’t living up to its potential, and serve as an active contributor in making it better. (“Be the change you seek.”)

As we come into 2019, we’re excited to identify the right engineering talent to help us scale. While raw programming talent is important, hopefully by now you’ve gotten the sense that there’s so much more to the equation that helps us identify how well you’ll serve your colleagues, community, and customer base at Atlassian.

Do your skills match up with what we’re seeking? If so, we think you’ll find a great home at Atlassian. Visit our Careers Page to find the right opportunity for you.