Atlassian P40 Interview Experience

Experience from Atlassian P40 Interview Process

I recently interviewed at Atlassian for a P40 role. The process consisted of approximately six rounds. Here's a detailed breakdown of my experience:

1. Karat Round

• This round included questions commonly repeated in Atlassian interviews. You can find examples here: Karat Questions.

2. Round 1: Rating System

• The task involved designing a system to calculate the average rating, with multiple follow-up questions and discussions.
• For reference, here’s a link to a similar problem: Rating System Problem.

3. Round 2: Population Question

• The challenge centered on a classic Atlassian problem: implementing a +1/-1 population tracker.
• The follow-up task involved printing the top K values. The approach didn’t need to be highly optimized; even a solution using sets was acceptable.

4. Round 3: System Design

• This round revolved around designing a tagging system. Contrary to my preparation, the discussion heavily focused on specific technologies, such as:
  • Why REST APIs over other options?
  • Database choices like Cassandra or DynamoDB.
  • Messaging services like SQS or Kafka.
• My preparation emphasized starting with a non-scaled solution and incrementally scaling, but the interviewer preferred diving deeply into specific implementations.

Outcome

I didn’t pass the system design round. The focus was very different from what I anticipated, leaning heavily towards practical knowledge of specific technologies rather than conceptual approaches to system scaling.

This experience was a valuable learning opportunity, particularly in aligning interview preparation with the expectations of such rounds.