Senior Principal Engineering Manager / Head of Engineering

Atlassian is seeking a Senior Principal Engineering Manager / Head of Engineering to lead the Atlassian Guard engineering organization. The role owns engineering strategy, team health, and delivery across multiple teams while partnering with product, design, and go-to-market stakeholders to build and scale an enterprise security product.

Responsibilities:

• Lead and scale a multi-team engineering organization (managers of managers), including hiring, retention, performance management, and organizational design
• Build a high-performance culture rooted in psychological safety, accountability, and continuous improvement
• Develop engineering leaders — coach and mentor engineering managers and senior ICs to grow in their careers and impact
• Champion engineering excellence across the organization through best practices in architecture, reliability, security, and operational readiness
• Define and own the engineering vision and technical strategy for Atlassian Guard, ensuring alignment with Atlassian's broader platform and security strategy
• Partner with Product Management and Design to shape the multi-year product roadmap, making informed trade-offs between customer value, technical investment, and operational sustainability
• Drive innovation in cloud security — staying ahead of evolving threat landscapes, compliance requirements (SOC2, ISO 27001, FedRAMP, etc.), and industry trends
• Be accountable for delivery of complex, multi-quarter programs across multiple teams, ensuring predictability, quality, and customer impact
• Establish and track key engineering metrics (velocity, reliability, quality, team health) to drive data-informed decisions
• Own operational excellence — ensure Atlassian Guard meets the highest standards of availability, performance, and incident response
• Collaborate across Atlassian with peer engineering leaders, platform teams, security teams, and executive stakeholders to drive alignment and remove blockers
• Represent Atlassian Guard in senior leadership forums, contributing to company-wide engineering strategy and investment decisions
• Partner with Go-to-Market teams (Sales, Customer Success, Solutions Engineering) to ensure the product meets enterprise customer needs and supports business growth

Requirements:

• 15+ years of experience in software engineering, with 7+ years in engineering management, including experience as a manager of managers leading multi-team organizations
• Proven track record of building, scaling, and leading high-performing engineering teams (50+ engineers preferred) in a fast-paced SaaS/cloud environment
• Deep understanding of cloud security domains — identity & access management, data protection, threat detection, compliance, or related areas
• Strong technical acumen — ability to engage meaningfully in architectural decisions, system design, and technical trade-offs even as a senior leader
• Experience delivering enterprise-grade products with high reliability and scale requirements
• Exceptional communication and influence skills — comfortable presenting to executives, partnering with cross-functional leaders, and inspiring large teams
• Demonstrated ability to think strategically while maintaining a strong bias for action and execution
• Experience operating in agile/lean environments and driving continuous improvement in engineering processes