Senior Principal Forward Deployed Engineer
Posted 4 days ago
The role in short
Lead the design and deployment of AI-powered solutions and integrations for customers, influencing product direction and mentoring other engineers.
Working at Atlassian
Atlassians can choose where they work – whether in an office, from home, or a combination of the two. That way, Atlassians have more control over supporting their family, personal goals, and other priorities. We can hire people in any country where we have a legal entity.
What you’ll do
As a Senior Principal Forward Deployed Engineer, you will:
Code contributes across the entire Atlassian product suite, providing exceptionally broad engineering exposure
Lead the design, development, and deployment of AI/ML-powered solutions using Rovo tailored to customer needs.
Architect and implement robust application integrations using Python, JavaScript, or similar languages, with a focus on APIs, microservices, and enterprise-scale systems.
Influence product direction by building with the customers, and realising the last mile papercuts they go through.
Champion the adoption of AI-augmented workflow automation within customer environments, maximizing business value and operational efficiency.
Oversee the end-to-end deployment of AI solutions into production, ensuring continuous evaluation, monitoring, and improvement.
Navigate risk and compliance requirements, including AI risk assessment, data privacy (GDPR), and regulatory frameworks.
Mentor and guide Senior FDEs and engineers, fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous learning.
Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders, creating concise artifacts for peers, partners, and leadership.
Align technical solutions with business objectives, setting a clear vision for technological progress and measurable results.
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: $235,800 - $307,850
Zone B: $212,220 - $277,065
Zone C: $195,714 - $255,516
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.
Prep for this interview
3 questions likely to come up at Atlassian, each matched to a line in this posting.
- 1Integrations and APIs
They wrote: “Architect and implement robust application integrations using Python, JavaScript, or similar languages, with a focus on APIs, microservices, and enterprise-scale systems.”
Walk me through connecting our product to a customer's internal system that has no documentation.
How to answer
Why they ask: This happens weekly in the job. They want a calm, step-by-step method.
- Find who owns the system and get read access to a test environment
- Watch real traffic or logs to learn the data shapes
- Build a thin adapter with logging around every call
- Agree on how failures get reported, and who fixes what
Tip: Talk about finding the owner of the system first. The code is the easy part.
- 2Discovery and scoping
They wrote: “Navigate risk and compliance requirements, including AI risk assessment, data privacy (GDPR), and regulatory frameworks.”
Tell me about a time the customer asked for one thing but needed another.
How to answer
Why they ask: Good FDEs spot when a request is a guess at a solution. They want proof you can redirect a customer without losing their trust.
- What they asked for, and the detail that made you doubt it
- How you tested the doubt (shadowed users, looked at logs, ran a quick prototype)
- How you made the case to the customer
- What shipped and what changed for them
Tip: Pick a story where you checked your hunch with data or users before pushing back.
- 3Coding
They wrote: “Influence product direction by building with the customers, and realising the last mile papercuts they go through.”
Build a small in-memory cache. Then add expiry. Then a size limit.
How to answer
Why they ask: Staged exercises show how your code holds up when requirements change mid-interview, like at a customer.
- Start with get and set on a dictionary, plus tests
- Store an expiry time with each value and check it on read
- Track use order and evict the least recently used entry when full
- Say what you'd change for many threads or many machines
Tip: Keep the first version simple and well tested so the next stage is a small change.
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