Senior Principal Engineering Manager / Head of Engineering

Engineering | Seattle, United States | Remote, Remote
Working at Atlassian
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We are seeking a Senior Principal Engineering Manager / Head of Engineering (M70) to lead the Atlassian Guard engineering organization. Atlassian Guard is our enterprise-grade security product that helps organizations protect their critical data across the Atlassian cloud ecosystem - delivering capabilities such as data loss prevention, threat detection, identity & access management, audit logging, and security policy enforcement.
In this role, you will own the engineering strategy, team health, and delivery excellence for Atlassian Guard. You will lead multiple engineering teams, partner closely with Product, Design, and Go-to-Market stakeholders, and be accountable for building a world-class security product that scales to serve hundreds of thousands of enterprise customers.
Responsibilities
Engineering Leadership & People Management

• 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.

Strategy & Vision

• 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.

Execution & Delivery

• 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.

Cross-Functional & Organizational Influence

• 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.

Qualifications

• 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.

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.
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