Atlassian asks its behavioral interview questions in a values interview built around the five values Atlassian publishes: a 45-minute round with an engineering manager for US graduates and interns, and separate values and management rounds for experienced hires. Common prompts: “Describe a time you had to choose between what was best for the business and what was best for the customer,” “Tell me about a problem nobody asked you to solve, that you solved anyway” and “Describe a time you gave or received direct, unfiltered feedback.”
Where the values interview sits in the Atlassian interview process
In US candidate reports on Taro:
- San Francisco intern (offer): a 45-minute behavioral round with an engineering manager in November, after a 45-minute technical round in October; the offer came about two months after applying.
- San Francisco software engineer, 2026 (offer declined): one STAR behavioral round after a single LeetCode medium coding round, about two weeks end to end.
- US full stack engineer, March 2025 (no offer): two behavioral interviews, one on values and one with management, after browser coding, full stack and Jira-board design rounds. The candidate says basic behavioral questions were answered with reference to company values, and that Atlassian gives no interview feedback.
For P50 and P60 candidates, Bengaluru reports say weak values or manager rounds can lead to a down-level or a rejection, so the round is scored, not a formality.
Atlassian’s five values, and what each one tests
- Open company, no bullshit - direct, transparent communication over corporate-speak
- Build with heart and balance - ownership and hard work paired with sustainable pace
- Don’t #@!% the customer - putting the customer’s real interest ahead of what’s easiest
- Play, as a team - collaboration and shared wins over solo heroics
- Be the change you seek - taking initiative on problems nobody assigned you
What Atlassian Values interviewers are scoring
Evidence against Atlassian values, customer impact, teamwork beyond personal heroics, and openness. ShipIt curiosity is a plus when natural.
Common Atlassian behavioral and values questions
1. Tell me about yourself
End with why you’re interviewing for this Atlassian role today - tie it to something concrete about the team or product.
Sample answer (adapt with your real details): “I’m a senior in computer science graduating in May. For the past year I’ve focused on backend work - an internship where I built REST APIs in Java and a capstone that added search to a club portal using Elasticsearch. Before that I ran our coding club’s release process, which is where I first used Jira seriously. I applied to the Software Engineer, Graduate role in Seattle because I want to work on collaboration software that teams live in every day, and because a scored values interview tells me culture here is evaluated, not assumed.”
2. Why Atlassian?
Sample direction: “Atlassian builds tools I’ve actually used to get work done, and its values put transparency and customer trust ahead of corporate polish - that matches how I want to work.” Add one concrete product/team detail you actually know, not a generic compliment.
Sample STAR-style answer: “Situation: I’ve used Jira and Confluence on every team project for two years. Task: I wanted my first full-time role to be somewhere product quality and team culture are both explicit hiring bars. Action: I read Atlassian’s early-careers guide and your published values, then spoke with an alum who works on platform tooling. What stuck was that a dedicated values round is scored separately - that matches how I want to be evaluated. Result: I’m here because I want to grow on teams that ship customer-trusted collaboration software, not generic IT services, and I’m willing to be held to your five values in interview and on the job.”
3. Describe a time you had to choose between what was best for the business and what was best for the customer
Framework: STAR, naming the actual trade-off you faced. Maps to “Don’t #@!% the customer” - Atlassian wants evidence you’d protect the customer’s interest even under business pressure, not just say you would.
Sample STAR: “Situation: In my internship, marketing wanted a ‘quick win’ banner that collected emails before showing pricing - legal hadn’t reviewed it. Task: I was the junior dev asked to ship by Friday. Action: I pushed back with a one-page note: the flow broke our own privacy policy template and would force support tickets if users felt tricked. I proposed a two-step flow with explicit consent copy instead; it added one day of work. Result: We shipped Tuesday with legal sign-off; bounce rate on the page was fine and support saw zero complaints about hidden pricing. I’d make the same call at Atlassian when customer trust is on the line.”
4. Tell me about a problem nobody asked you to solve, that you solved anyway
Framework: Situation → what you noticed that others didn’t flag → the action you took without waiting for sign-off → the result. Maps to “Be the change you seek.” A story where you asked permission first is a weaker fit for this question than one where you simply acted and then informed people.
Sample STAR: “Situation: Our lab’s CI pipeline failed silently on flaky tests - people reran manually. Task: Nobody owned it; releases slipped every sprint. Action: I added a junit retry rule and a Slack webhook on third failure, documented it in the repo README, and posted in the team channel after it was working - I didn’t wait for a ticket. Result: Failed-release Fridays stopped within two sprints; the lead asked me to extend the same pattern to staging. That’s the kind of initiative I associate with ‘Be the change you seek.’”
5. Describe a time you gave or received direct, unfiltered feedback
Framework: Situation → the specific feedback (say the actual words if you can) → what changed afterward. Maps to “Open company, no bullshit.” Atlassian explicitly says it doesn’t want people who avoid hard conversations, or people who are blunt without empathy - so pair directness with respect in your answer.
Sample STAR (giving feedback): “Situation: A teammate’s PRs often lacked tests and blocked others. Task: I needed velocity without damaging trust. Action: I asked for a 15-minute 1:1 and said plainly, ‘When tests are missing I can’t review confidently and it slows everyone - can we pair on one PR this week so we align on coverage?’ Action over blame. Result: We paired once; their next three PRs included tests; our review cycle time dropped noticeably.”
Sample STAR (receiving): “Situation: My manager said in a retro, ‘Your updates in standup are accurate but too long - people tune out.’ Task: Keep stakeholders informed without eating the meeting. Action: I switched to a written async update before standup and kept verbal updates to blockers only. Result: Standup time fell and she cited the change in my review as a growth moment.”
6. Tell me about a time you balanced a hard deadline with your team’s wellbeing
Framework: STAR, showing the actual trade-off (what you cut, delayed, or renegotiated) rather than “we just worked harder.” Maps to “Build with heart and balance.”
Sample STAR: “Situation: Demo day was in four days; two teammates were exam-bound. Task: Ship a working auth flow without burning them out. Action: I re-scoped OAuth to email magic-link only, moved social login to the backlog with owners, and blocked no-meeting evenings. Result: We demoed on time; post-demo we added Google login in a calmer sprint. Heart and balance meant cutting scope, not ordering pizza at midnight every night.”
7. Describe a time you put team success ahead of your own individual contribution
Framework: STAR, with a concrete moment where you deprioritized personal credit or a preferred approach for the team’s outcome. Maps to “Play, as a team.”
Sample STAR: “Situation: Hackathon team split frontend/backend; I wanted to own the ML piece for resume shine. Task: Our bottleneck was integration, not model accuracy. Action: I handed the model to a teammate who knew PyTorch better and I wired API + UI glue all weekend. Result: We placed second; the judge praised end-to-end polish. I’d rather the team win than my GitHub graph look heroic.”
8. Strengths and weaknesses
Strength: give evidence a manager would actually cite. Weakness: real, non-fatal, with a concrete improvement action - not “I work too hard.”
Sample strength: “I’m strong at making ambiguous bugs tractable - in my capstone I traced a race condition using logs and a minimal repro, which my mentor said saved them a day.”
Sample weakness: “I sometimes jump to code before writing down constraints. I’ve started a five-minute ‘assumptions’ bullet list before opening my IDE; it’s cut rework on my last two assignments.”
9. Are you willing to relocate, and when can you start?
Answer honestly and directly - Atlassian’s own “no bullshit” value applies to your answers here too, not just your project stories.
Sample answer (US): “Yes. The graduate posting says the role is in Seattle, and I’m ready to work from that office. I graduate in May and can start whenever the next cohort begins. On work authorization, I’ll be clear up front about my status so we don’t find out late in the process.”
10. What do you know about Atlassian?
Prepare 3 facts beyond “they make Jira”: which products/teams you’re interested in, one specific engineering or product challenge (e.g. scaling Confluence/Jira collaboration, or Bitbucket’s CI/CD surface), and the five published values.
Sample answer: “Atlassian builds Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket, and Trello for roughly 300,000 customers globally. Your design interviews look like your own products, such as a Jira board with tasks, statuses and priorities, which tells me the work is product engineering, not abstract scale puzzles. I know the five values by name because your values interview maps directly to them.”
11. Do you have any questions for us?
Ask about how the team handles disagreement, what a strong first six months looks like, or how remote/distributed work is structured on the team. Avoid making compensation your first question.
Strong questions: “How does this team run design reviews when PM and engineering disagree?” · “What does a strong first six months look like for a new grad on your team?” · “How is the values interview feedback used in the hiring committee?”
12. Tell me about a time you disagreed with a stakeholder (often maps to Open company + Play as a team)
Sample STAR: “Situation: Product wanted a dark-pattern upsell modal; I believed it would hurt trust. Task: Ship the feature without silencing my concern. Action: I brought usage data from a competitor teardown and proposed an opt-in trial instead; we whiteboarded both flows. Result: We shipped the opt-in variant; conversion was slightly lower but NPS comments improved - my manager said the disagreement was handled the way Atlassian expects.”
13. Tell me about something you shipped that did not go as planned
Sample STAR: “Situation: I deployed a cache change that served stale profile data for ~20 minutes. Task: Fix and prevent repeat. Action: I posted in the team channel immediately with impact scope, rolled back, then added cache TTL metrics and a runbook step. Result: No customer escalation; post-mortem added a staging load test. Maps to ownership and learning - Atlassian interviewers listen for self-caught failures, not blame.”
Real examples to prepare before Atlassian’s values interview
| Story type | Prompt | Which value it tests |
|---|---|---|
| Customer trade-off | Chose the customer’s interest over what was easiest for the business | Don’t #@!% the customer |
| Initiative | Fixed a problem nobody asked you to fix | Be the change you seek |
| Candor | Gave or received direct, unfiltered feedback | Open company, no bullshit |
| Balance | Protected wellbeing while still hitting a hard deadline | Build with heart and balance |
| Teamwork | Put the team’s outcome ahead of your own contribution | Play, as a team |
14. Tell me about a time you protected the customer
Maps to: Don’t #@!% the customer. Sample STAR: “Situation: Product owner wanted to hide a known data-loss bug behind a ‘refresh’ tip. Task: Stop user harm. Action: I reproduced the bug, estimated affected users, and argued for a fix-forward with a status banner. Result: We delayed the release one day, shipped the fix, and support tickets on that issue stayed at zero.”
Red flags to avoid
- Vague, slogan-heavy answers (“I’m a team player,” “great company”) with no specific story
- Reusing the same story across two or more values-round questions
- Describing feedback you avoided giving, when asked for one you actually gave
- Zero questions at the end - Atlassian treats this as low engagement
Atlassian India: values round in the Bengaluru Graduate Program
India graduate loops end with a values and management round, often with a director or engineering manager, after one or two technical rounds. The relocation question there is about Bengaluru and the July cohort start.
Sample relocation answer (India): “I’m open to relocating to Bengaluru for the Graduate Program, and I can join with the July cohort if selected.”
Tell me about yourself (India Graduate Program version): “I’m a final-year CSE student graduating in 2026. For the past year I’ve focused on backend work - an internship where I built REST APIs in Java and a capstone that added search to a club portal using Elasticsearch. I’m interviewing for Atlassian’s Graduate Program in Bengaluru because I want to work on collaboration software at scale.”
Sources
Round placement comes from US candidate reports on Taro: San Francisco intern offer, San Francisco software engineer, 2026 and US full stack engineer, March 2025.
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