Atlassian interview experience India: rehearse the rounds people underestimate
Most engineers prepare for Atlassian like any other product company and then get caught out by two rounds: code design, where you build and extend a working component in an hour, and the values round, where vague answers about teamwork don't get you through. Both are easy to practise and hard to fake. A mock interview with an engineer who knows how these rounds are scored shows you where you stand before the real loop.
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P40 or P50? Book a system design + values mock
This guide is compiled from candidate reports from Bengaluru and other Atlassian offices in 2025 and 2026. These aren't first-person stories, and the practice questions are not leaked.
Atlassian interview process at a glance
[[table]]
Stage | Format | Length
Recruiter call | Background, fit | 30 min
Screen | Online test or Karat | 60 to 120 min
Coding | DSA | 60 min
Code design | Working component | 60 min
System design | P40 and above | 60 min
Values | Behavioural | 45 to 60 min
Manager | Projects, fit | 45 min
[[/table]]
Not every candidate gets every round. Freshers and P30 candidates usually skip system design. Experienced candidates often start with a Karat screen, a technical interview run by a third-party company on Atlassian's behalf. Most loops in India run virtually and finish within two to four weeks, though a few senior candidates report longer waits for a final decision.
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Atlassian levels in India
[[table]]
Level | Title | Typical exp.
P20 | Graduate engineer | 0 yrs
P30 | Software Engineer | 1 to 4 yrs
P40 | Senior Software Engineer | 4 to 8 yrs
P50 | Principal Engineer | 8+ yrs
[[/table]]
Experience is only a guide. Your level is decided by how you do in the loop, and Atlassian is known to offer a lower level than the one you applied for when design or values feedback is mixed.
The Atlassian interview rounds, one by one
Online test or Karat screen
Campus hires and some P30 candidates get an online test, usually two or three problems in about two hours. Candidates describe these as harder than the live rounds, so don't take the test lightly.
Experienced candidates usually get a Karat screen instead. It's an hour-long video interview run by a Karat engineer, often with a few quick design or concept questions followed by one or two coding problems. Karat interviews are recorded and reviewed by Atlassian, and some candidates are rejected at this stage, so treat it as a real round.
Coding round
A medium-level DSA problem, sometimes with a follow-up. Interviewers care about clean code and how clearly you explain your approach. Talk through edge cases before you run anything.
Code design round
This is Atlassian's signature round. You build a small working component, like a rate limiter or a content popularity tracker, and the interviewer keeps adding requirements. It's low-level design with real, runnable code.
Candidates who do well keep their classes small, name things clearly, and avoid hard-coding anything the interviewer might change next. Candidates who struggle usually write one long function that works for the first requirement and then falls apart.
System design round
For P40 and above. Expect a large-scale design with a lot of follow-up questions on trade-offs. Reported prompts include a URL scraping system and services similar to Atlassian's own products, like a notification system for Jira or real-time editing for Confluence. Frontend roles get a frontend system design round instead.
Values round
Atlassian takes this round seriously, and it can fail an otherwise strong candidate. Interviewers ask about Atlassian's five values:
- Open company, no BS
- Build with heart and balance
- Don't #@!% the customer
- Play, as a team
- Be the change you seek
You'll get questions like "Tell me about a time you gave honest feedback that was hard to hear" or "Tell me about a time you put the customer ahead of a deadline." Use specific stories with a clear outcome. Generic answers about being a team player don't score well.
Manager round
A conversation with the hiring manager about your past projects, how you work with others, and why Atlassian. Some candidates report questions about feedback they've received and how it changed their work.
Practise the code design and values rounds
Atlassian P30 interview experience
P30 is the level most Indian engineers with one to four years of experience interview for. A typical P30 loop has a screen (online test or Karat), one coding round, one code design round, a values round and a manager round. There's usually no system design round.
The code design round decides most P30 outcomes. Interviewers want working code that's easy to extend, and they'll add two or three new requirements in the hour. The values round is the second filter. P30 candidates sometimes treat it as an HR chat and get caught out.
Your stories can be smaller at this level. A bug you owned end to end, a code review where you pushed back, or a time you helped a teammate all work well, as long as they're specific.
P30 practice questions
These are practice questions in the style candidates describe. They're not leaked questions.
- Build a rate limiter for an API, then add different limits per customer tier.
- Build a tracker that returns the most popular content, and update it as views and unviews arrive.
- Build a simple snake game engine that handles moves, growth and collisions.
- Given a list of file paths and sizes, return the total size of each directory.
- Tell me about a time you gave or received difficult feedback.
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Atlassian P40 interview experience
P40 is Senior Software Engineer. The loop adds a system design round, and the values and manager rounds expect stories with wider scope.
Interviewers want to see you lead the design conversation, go deep on trade-offs, and explain how the system would be run in production. In the behavioural rounds, bring stories about leading a project, mentoring someone, or changing how your team works.
The most common P40 outcome that disappoints candidates is a P30 offer. It usually happens when design feedback is mixed or the stories only show individual work.
P40 practice questions
- Design a notification system for an issue tracker used by thousands of companies.
- Design a URL scraping service that respects rate limits for each website.
- Tell me about a time you changed a decision your team had already made.
Atlassian P50 interview experience
P50 is Principal Engineer, usually for engineers with eight or more years of experience. Candidates describe five or six rounds, including system design, coding, values, and conversations with senior leaders about technical direction.
The bar is high and the process can be slow. Some P50 candidates report waiting several weeks for a decision, and a few report being offered P40 after the loop. Expect questions about setting direction across teams, handling disagreement between senior engineers, and the long-term cost of technical decisions.
P50 practice questions
- Design real-time collaborative editing for a document product, including conflict handling.
- How would you split a large shared service owned by five teams without a feature freeze?
- Tell me about a technical direction you set that other teams adopted.
Book a P40 / P50 design mock with a senior engineer
How to prepare for an Atlassian interview
Practise code design with a timer. Build a small component (a rate limiter, an LRU cache, a leaderboard) in 30 minutes, then ask a friend to add a new requirement and see how much code you have to change. Do this five or six times before your loop.
Keep DSA at a steady medium level. Atlassian's live coding rounds rarely go very hard, but the online test can.
If you're going for P40 or P50, practise one system design a week, ideally around collaboration products like issue trackers, wikis or chat. Our system design interview preparation guide has a framework and the 15 most common questions.
Read Atlassian's values page and write one story for each value. Rehearse them out loud until each one fits in about two minutes.
If you're getting a Karat screen, practise coding on a video call with someone watching. It feels different from solving problems alone.
Then take a mock interview that covers code design and values as well as coding.
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FAQs
How many rounds are in the Atlassian interview in India? Usually five or six: a recruiter call, a screen (online test or Karat), coding, code design, values and a manager round. P40 and above add system design.
What is the Atlassian code design round? A round where you build a small working component, like a rate limiter, and extend it as new requirements come in. It tests clean, extensible code.
What is the Karat round at Atlassian? A technical screen run by Karat, a third-party interviewing company. It's recorded and reviewed by Atlassian.
What experience do I need for P30? Most P30 hires in India have one to four years of experience, but your level is set by your interview performance.
How important is the values round? Very. Candidate reports describe strong engineers being rejected because of weak values answers.
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Get the Atlassian Offer at the Right Level: Take a Mock Interview
Atlassian's code design and values rounds are where most candidates lose ground. Practise both with an engineer from a top tech company, get honest feedback on each round, and go into your loop knowing which level you're performing at.
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