Interview experience
Atlassian Interview Questions and Answers (2026)
Overview
Section titled “Overview”Atlassian’s engineering loop pairs LeetCode-medium coding and practical system design with a dedicated Values interview built around its five published company values.
Atlassian interview process at a glance
Section titled “Atlassian interview process at a glance”| Round | Duration | What it tests |
|---|---|---|
| Recruiter screen | 20-30 min | Background, motivation, comp expectations, logistics |
| Online Assessment (campus/grad) | 90 min | 2-3 coding problems on HackerRank |
| Technical screen (Karat, experienced hires) | 45-60 min | Rapid-fire fundamentals (OS/networking) + 1-2 coding problems |
| Onsite - Coding (x2) | 45-60 min each | DSA (LeetCode medium), code design, communication |
| Onsite - System design | 45-60 min | Practical design: task list, job scheduler, notification system |
| Values interview | ~45 min | Alignment with Atlassian’s 5 published values |
| Managerial / hiring manager | 30-45 min | Team fit, career goals, closing |
Recruiter screen
Section titled “Recruiter screen”A 20-30 minute call to confirm background, work authorization, current comp/notice period, and why Atlassian. It’s a filter, not a technical bar - be direct about your timeline and expectations.
Common questions
- Walk me through your resume/current role
- Why are you looking at Atlassian right now?
- What are your compensation expectations?
- What’s your notice period / earliest start date?
Full behavioural frameworks are on the Atlassian HR interview questions page.
Online Assessment (campus and grad hires)
Section titled “Online Assessment (campus and grad hires)”For campus and graduate hiring, Atlassian runs a 90-minute Online Assessment on HackerRank with 2-3 coding problems of increasing difficulty. Clean, fully passing solutions matter more here than partial credit on a harder problem.
Common questions
- Array/string manipulation at LeetCode-easy to medium difficulty
- A graph or tree problem as the harder of the 2-3 problems
- Basic OS/DBMS-flavoured MCQs on some drives
See how real candidates handled this stage on the Atlassian interview experience page.
Technical screen (experienced hires)
Section titled “Technical screen (experienced hires)”Many experienced-hire loops route the first technical round through Karat, a third-party interviewing service - so the interviewer is not an Atlassian employee. Expect a handful of rapid-fire fundamentals (OS, networking, basic CS concepts) followed by one or two LeetCode-medium coding problems pulled from Atlassian’s own question bank.
Common questions
- Quick-fire fundamentals: process vs thread, TCP vs UDP, time/space complexity
- Sliding window or two-pointer array problem
- A tree or graph traversal problem with follow-up complexity questions
Round-by-round breakdowns are on the Atlassian interview experience page.
Onsite: coding rounds
Section titled “Onsite: coding rounds”Two back-to-back 45-60 minute rounds, each usually one problem with follow-ups. Atlassian’s interviewers are reported to weigh how you communicate your approach and structure your code about as heavily as whether the final answer is correct - narrate your reasoning rather than coding in silence.
Common questions
- Longest substring without repeating characters (sliding window + hashmap)
- Binary tree level-order traversal (BFS)
- Detect a cycle in a directed graph (DFS colouring / topological sort)
- Design an LRU cache
- Merge intervals / overlapping intervals
Onsite: system design
Section titled “Onsite: system design”A 45-60 minute round scoped closer to a real product feature than a hyperscale distributed system - think a piece of Jira or Confluence rather than “design Twitter.” Interviewers care about a workable API, sensible data model, and named trade-offs over textbook buzzwords.
Common questions
- Design a task list / ticketing system (a simplified Jira-style board)
- Design a job scheduler or background-task queue
- Design a notification system for a collaboration tool
- Design a simple URL shortener or rate limiter
The values interview
Section titled “The values interview”This is Atlassian’s most distinctive round. Rather than a generic “tell me about a conflict” chat, it’s built entirely around the five values Atlassian publishes publicly: Open company, no bullshit; Build with heart and balance; Don’t #@!% the customer; Play, as a team; and Be the change you seek. Interviewers expect a separate, professional story for each value, not a personal anecdote recycled from an earlier round - and because there are only five values, prepared candidates have a real edge here.
Common questions
- Describe a time you had to choose between what was best for the business and what was best for the customer (maps to “Don’t #@!% the customer”)
- Tell me about a problem nobody asked you to fix, that you fixed anyway (maps to “Be the change you seek”)
- Describe a time you gave or received direct, unfiltered feedback (maps to “Open company, no bullshit”)
- Tell me about a time you balanced pushing hard on a deadline with protecting your team’s wellbeing (maps to “Build with heart and balance”)
- Describe a time you prioritized team success over your own individual contribution (maps to “Play, as a team”)
Sample answer frameworks for each value are on the Atlassian HR interview questions page.
Managerial / hiring manager round
Section titled “Managerial / hiring manager round”A closing 30-45 minute conversation, usually with the hiring manager: team fit, what you’re looking for in your next role, and any remaining logistics (location, start date, compensation). Treat it as a real evaluation, not a formality - Atlassian candidates report this round can still change an outcome.
Common questions
- What kind of team/problems are you looking to work on next?
- Tell me about a project you’re proud of and your specific role in it
- Do you have questions about the team, roadmap, or day-to-day work?
Common technical interview questions and answers
Section titled “Common technical interview questions and answers”Q: How do you find the longest substring without repeating characters?
Use a sliding window with a hash map from character to its last seen index. Move the right pointer across the string; when the current character was seen at an index at or after the current left pointer, jump left to one past that index. Update the best length as right minus left plus one at every step, and always store the current character’s index. This is O(n) time with a single pass and O(min(n, alphabet)) space - Atlassian interviewers usually follow up by asking you to return the substring itself, which just means also recording the window start when the best length improves.
Q: How do you detect a cycle in a directed graph?
Run DFS with three-colour marking: white for unvisited, grey for nodes on the current recursion stack, black for fully explored. If DFS reaches a grey node, you have found a back edge and therefore a cycle. The alternative is Kahn’s algorithm for topological sort: repeatedly remove nodes with in-degree zero, and if fewer than all nodes come out, the remainder forms a cycle. Both are O(V + E); the DFS version gives you the offending cycle directly, while Kahn’s also gives you a valid ordering when the graph is acyclic.
Q: How would you implement an LRU cache with O(1) get and put?
Combine a hash map with a doubly linked list. The map goes from key to the list node holding that key and value; the list keeps nodes in recency order with the most recently used at the head. On get, look up the node in O(1) and move it to the head. On put, update and move to head if the key exists, otherwise insert a new node at the head and, if the size exceeds capacity, remove the tail node and delete its key from the map. A doubly linked list is required because eviction and reordering need O(1) unlinking, which a singly linked list cannot give you.
Q: How do you merge overlapping intervals?
Sort the intervals by start time, then sweep through them keeping one current interval. If the next interval’s start is less than or equal to the current interval’s end, they overlap, so extend the current end to the maximum of the two ends; otherwise push the current interval to the output and make the next one current. Remember to push the final interval after the loop. Sorting dominates the cost, so this is O(n log n) time and O(n) output space, and the sort is the key insight the interviewer is checking for.
Q: How would you design a job scheduler or background task queue?
Store jobs in a durable table with fields for payload, run-at timestamp, status and attempt count, and have worker processes poll for due jobs using a transactional claim (select the row for update, mark it running) so two workers never take the same job. Use a min-heap or an index on run-at to find the next due job efficiently, and make handlers idempotent because at-least-once delivery means retries will occasionally duplicate work. Add exponential backoff with jitter for failures, a maximum attempt count feeding a dead-letter queue, and a visibility timeout so a job whose worker crashed becomes claimable again.
Q: How would you design a notification system for a collaboration tool?
Separate event production from delivery: services publish events like “comment added” or “issue assigned” to a queue, a fan-out worker resolves who should be notified based on watchers and mentions, and per-channel senders handle in-app, email and push. Store user preferences and a digest window so a user watching a noisy Jira board gets one batched email rather than fifty, and de-duplicate on an event id so a retried message does not double-notify. Keep the in-app feed in its own table with a read flag for fast unread counts, and treat email and push as asynchronous best-effort with retries.
Q: What is the difference between TCP and UDP?
TCP is connection-oriented: it performs a three-way handshake, numbers every byte, retransmits lost segments, reorders out-of-order data, and applies flow control and congestion control, so the application sees a reliable ordered byte stream. UDP is connectionless and sends independent datagrams with no handshake, no retransmission, no ordering and no congestion control, adding only a port and an optional checksum on top of IP. That makes UDP lower latency and lower overhead, which is why it suits live video, voice, gaming and DNS, while TCP suits file transfer, HTTP and anything where a missing byte is unacceptable.
Q: How would you implement a rate limiter?
The token bucket is the usual answer: each client has a bucket that refills at a fixed rate up to a maximum capacity, and a request consumes one token or is rejected when the bucket is empty, which allows short bursts while capping the long-run rate. A fixed-window counter is simpler but lets twice the limit through at a window boundary, so a sliding-window log or sliding-window counter fixes that at higher memory cost. In a distributed setting keep the counters in Redis and do the check-and-decrement in a single atomic operation or Lua script, otherwise concurrent requests across servers race past the limit.
Frequently asked questions about Atlassian interviews
Section titled “Frequently asked questions about Atlassian interviews”What is the Atlassian interview process?
Atlassian’s loop usually runs: 1. Recruiter screen (20-30 min) - background, motivation, comp expectations. 2. For campus/grad hires: an Online Assessment (90 min, 2-3 coding problems on HackerRank). For experienced hires: a technical screen, often run by a third-party platform called Karat (45-60 min) - rapid-fire fundamentals plus 1-2 coding problems. 3. A virtual onsite (3-5 rounds) - two coding/DSA rounds, one practical system design round, one Values interview built around Atlassian’s five published company values, and one managerial/hiring-manager round. End-to-end timeline is roughly 3-6 weeks.
What questions are asked in Atlassian interviews?
Coding rounds lean on LeetCode-medium DSA - arrays/strings, trees, graphs, sliding window - with communication and code design weighed as heavily as a working answer. System design stays practical in scope (a task list, job scheduler, or notification system) rather than distributed-systems-at-FAANG-scale. The Values interview asks about prioritizing the customer over convenience, taking initiative on a problem nobody assigned you, and giving or receiving direct feedback - mapped to Atlassian’s five values.
What is the Atlassian values interview?
A dedicated ~45-minute behavioural round built entirely around Atlassian’s five published company values: Open company, no bullshit; Build with heart and balance; Don’t #@!% the customer; Play, as a team; and Be the change you seek. Interviewers ask for a distinct, professional (not personal) story mapped to each value - candidates report the question bank is fairly limited since there are only five values to cover.
How many rounds are there in the Atlassian interview?
Typically 4-6 touchpoints depending on track: campus/grad hires usually see an Online Assessment plus 3-4 interviews (technical, values, and a manager conversation). Experienced hires typically see a recruiter screen, a Karat-run technical screen, then a 3-5 round virtual onsite (2 coding, 1 system design, 1 values, 1 managerial). Composition varies by team and level, so treat this as a template, not a fixed script.
How should I prepare for Atlassian interviews?
Practice LeetCode-medium DSA while explaining your reasoning out loud - Atlassian’s interviewers are reported to weigh communication and code design as heavily as a correct answer. Prepare a practical system design walkthrough (task list, scheduler, or notification-system scope, not hyperscale), and prepare one distinct STAR story for each of Atlassian’s five values so you’re not reusing material across the Values round.
Does Atlassian hire freshers through campus placements in India?
Yes, but it is not a mass placement drive like TCS or Infosys. Atlassian runs a formal Graduate Program and internships with Bengaluru as its main India engineering hub (Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket, and platform teams), recruiting on a rolling basis roughly July-December, with the grad program itself starting in July. Hiring is more selective and rolling than a fixed-date campus drive, so applying early matters more than waiting for a single placement-season deadline.
What are Atlassian’s core company values?
Five values, published on Atlassian’s own site, show up directly in interviews: Open company, no bullshit (transparency over corporate-speak); Build with heart and balance (ownership plus sustainable pace); Don’t #@!% the customer (customer-first trade-offs); Play, as a team (collaboration over solo wins); and Be the change you seek (initiative without being asked). The Values interview is built entirely around these five.