Principal Software Engineer

Working at Atlassian
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About the Role
We're looking for a Principal Full Stack Engineer (P60) to join the Atlassian Design System (ADS), part of the Dev Infra organisation. This role is based in the United States.
ADS enables Atlassian teams to build familiar, cohesive experiences across the System of Work. You'll join a multidisciplinary group shaping the foundations that make Atlassian products expressive, accessible, performant and consistent, including our React component library, design tokens, theming infrastructure, guidelines, patterns, documentation, tooling and services.
This role sits at the intersection of full stack engineering, design systems, architecture, AI and developer experience. You'll help evolve scalable frontend and backend foundations used across Atlassian while enabling AI tools and workflows to use rich, structured design system context. Together, this work helps thousands of Atlassians, AI agents and Marketplace partners create high-quality experiences for millions of users.

• Build reusable product foundations: Design, implement and evolve production-grade React components, platform patterns, APIs and services that improve cohesion across Atlassian products.
• Own end-to-end technical delivery: Lead projects from problem definition and technical design through implementation, launch, measurement and iteration across frontend and backend systems.
• Shape full stack architecture: Contribute to scalable package architecture, service boundaries, API contracts, data models, theming, testing, release processes and migration approaches.
• Develop AI-enabled workflows: Build tools, integrations and experiences that help AI agents and makers use ADS accurately, including structured design system content and MCP-based capabilities.
• Build reliable services and integrations: Create secure, observable and maintainable backend capabilities that support design system tooling, content, adoption workflows and developer experiences.
• Prototype and productise new ideas: Collaborate with design technologists to turn early concepts into realistic coded prototypes, then mature the most valuable ideas into reliable experiences.
• Improve quality and trust: Ensure solutions meet high standards for accessibility, performance, visual quality, security, observability, reliability and maintainability.
• Collaborate across Atlassian: Partner with product teams and other ADS pillars to support adoption, staged rollouts, migrations and consistent implementation.
• Increase developer velocity: Improve tooling, automation, documentation and workflows that reduce friction, technical debt and duplicated effort.
• Provide technical leadership: Break down complex work, identify risks, communicate trade-offs, influence technical direction and guide delivery with a strong focus on customer and partner impact.
• Raise engineering standards: Establish patterns for testing, observability, API design, operational readiness, secure development and sustainable ownership.
• Grow the engineering culture: Mentor engineers, participate in design and code reviews, share knowledge and contribute to a collaborative, high-performing team.

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: $209,700 - $273,775
Zone B: $188,730 - $246,398
Zone C: $174,051 - $227,233

• 10+ years of professional software development experience building, scaling, and operating high-impact, production-grade full-stack applications.
• Deep Front-End Craft & Architecture: Extensive hands-on expertise with modern JavaScript/TypeScript, modern component frameworks (e.g., React.js, Next.js), state management, web performance optimization, and web accessibility (a11y) standards.
• Robust Back-End & Distributed Systems: Proven experience designing, building, and maintaining scalable backend services, microservices, RESTful/GraphQL APIs, and data persistence layers (relational and/or NoSQL databases) using technologies such as Node.js, Java, Kotlin, Go, or Python.
• Cloud Infrastructure & Operational Excellence: Solid experience deploying and operating services on cloud platforms (AWS preferred), containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), CI/CD pipelines, and observability/telemetry tooling (metrics, logging, tracing).
• Technical Leadership & Architectural Scope: Demonstrated track record of technical leadership across multiple squads or domains-driving technical strategy, authoring RFCs/design docs, making sound architectural trade-offs, and managing technical debt.
• System Design at Scale: Deep understanding of resilience, performance, fault tolerance, security, and multi-tenant architectures.
• Mentorship & Quality Culture: Strong commitment to uplifting engineering craft, coaching and mentoring mid-to-senior engineers, conducting thorough code reviews, and championing best practices.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Exceptional communication skills with the ability to translate complex technical trade-offs into clear business outcomes for product managers, designers, engineering leadership, and non-technical stakeholders.
• Education: Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

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 .
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.