Senior Software Engineer Interview Experience - San Francisco, California
Process
Three interviews were scheduled back to back on the same day.
The first was with two SWEs. They started with some extremely basic SWE questions, then moved on to a more interactive technical discussion. This interview was roughly an hour long and felt extremely positive.
The second was with the hiring manager. His questions seemed to focus on customer relations experience and felt largely interrogative. I confirmed that he understood that I was interviewing for a SWE position. Thankfully, this was only a half-hour long.
The third interview was the strangest, and I believe it was intended to provoke a reaction. A hypothetical scenario was presented, starting with a personal project developed on my own time, asking how I would implement it. Then, the company I work for steals the project and asks me to lead the team to monetize it, continuing through several stages of scaling, security, customer relations, etc. None of the parts of the scenario related to the SWE position I was interviewing for, and the interviewer slipped in numerous big red flags, including a racist joke.
Questions
What is a Python decorator?
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Interview Statistics
The following metrics were computed from 4 interview experiences for the Atlassian Senior Software Engineer role in San Francisco, California.
Success Rate
Atlassian's interview process for their Senior Software Engineer roles in San Francisco, California is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.
Experience Rating
Candidates reported having very negative feelings for Atlassian's Senior Software Engineer interview process in San Francisco, California.
Atlassian Work Experiences
- 1.0Avoid unless you truly need remote.Senior Software Engineer • Current EmployeeSan Francisco, California, United StatesSeptember 23, 2025Pros: On paper, compensation is good. Nice offices. Some interesting technical challenges. Some really smart coworkers.Cons: Clueless management and "leadership". Squeezing employees and then PIPing them if they are not continually going above and beyond. Fear-based culture. Performance review every six months that is extremely intensive. Engineers are graded on PR count, Confluence pages created, interviews given, etc. This leads to overwork and burnout, while software teams do not focus on solving actual problems due to poor management and "leaders" focusing on the wrong things. I am not opposed to performance management, but Atlassian has some severe flaws in their current approach that I believe will negatively impact the company's performance in the long term.
- 2.0Constantly anxious and stressed.Senior Software Engineer • Current EmployeeSan Francisco, California, United StatesJune 30, 2025Pros: Good pay, WFH, and decent benefits.Cons: I previously enjoyed going to work every day, getting things done and helping others. The past year and especially the last few months have squeezed every ounce of motivation out of me. I now feel depressed and completely burned out. Every six months, we are asked to prove to the company why we should keep this job. This is all anybody cares about. I work 40 hours a week but am constantly stressing about work outside of those hours. On-call sucks. My P60 is hardly helpful and only cares about their metrics. Pay is not worth it.
- 4.0Solid big techSenior Software Engineer • Current EmployeeSan Francisco, California, United StatesJanuary 3, 2024Pros: Good work/life balance. Good benefits. Solid pay.Cons: It's a big company. Your experience and what you get to work on can vary wildly, depending on where you are placed.
Atlassian Interview Questions
