I was contacted by a recruiter for an SRE position based out of Bengaluru.

Coding Round: I was given a problem and allowed to use any language and IDE of my choice. I shared my screen. The problem was LeetCode medium. The interviewer was cordial and provided input on the solution. Since Atlassian does not have a dedicated QA team, developers are expected to write their own test suites. Because of this, the interviewer was very keen on how I tested the solution, emphasizing the importance of sufficient thought put into test case creation.

System Design: This was the bar raiser round. I was interviewed by a senior individual, a Director or Architect. The problem was unique and specific to Atlassian, not a standard distributed systems problem. The interviewer was interactive; it was important to discuss the solution before designing. He continuously pushed me to come up with a better solution.

Once I passed this round, HR contacted me and briefed me about the next rounds one by one. They were very helpful and assisted in preparation.

Technical Round: The interviewer was based out of the Sydney office and was part of the SRE team. The discussion covered past projects with follow-up questions. Some system questions followed.

Values Round: I read about the five Atlassian values. I was given a set of questions and asked to share real-life anecdotes.

Managerial Round: This round focused more on behavioral aspects than technical ones, asking about the most challenging problem I had faced, among other things.

After going through all the rounds and receiving positive feedback, I got a rejection a few days later. This was surprising, as even HR had been almost sure of my candidature. In the debrief call, I was told all feedback was good to great, except from the system design interviewer, who disagreed. I'm not sure if this is standard practice, but it felt ridiculous.

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