Principal Machine Learning Engineer

Overview

At Atlassian, we’re on a mission to unleash the potential of every team. As part of that mission, we're investing deeply in Generative AI — pioneering advanced modeling and rapid innovations that accelerate how teams work, discover, and create. We’re seeking a Principal Machine Learning Engineer (P60) to join our Knowledge AI team in the US. This is a hands‑on technical leadership role where you’ll push the boundaries of advanced GenAI modeling, agentic AI systems, rapid prototyping, and applied research.

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.

Responsibilities

• Advance GenAI Modeling with Knowledge
- Design and build novel approaches for knowledge‑grounded LLMs, embeddings, and multimodal modeling.
- Explore fine‑tuning, post‑training, and retrieval‑augmented strategies to adapt foundation models to Atlassian’s data.
- Lead technical explorations that expand the frontier of what’s possible in applied generative modeling.

• Prototype & Experiment Rapidly
- Drive POC experimentation, from agentic workflows to novel GenAI‑powered assistants.
- Translate research ideas into fast, working prototypes that demonstrate user value.
- Define and implement evaluation methods (groundedness, hallucination detection, human‑in‑the‑loop) to measure success.

• Provide Technical Leadership
- Provide technical mentorship to team members.
- Influence design and implementation across retrievers, rankers, orchestration, and serving infrastructure.
- Collaborate with product and platform teams to turn prototypes into scalable systems.

• Shape Innovation Strategy
- Contribute to the roadmap for advanced GenAI modeling and applied research.
- Partner with peers across Rovo, Jira Search, Knowledge AI, and Platform to drive cross‑team impact.
- Champion responsible AI, groundedness, and data quality in all innovations.

Qualifications

• Experience
- 6+ years in ML/AI engineering, with deep expertise in LLMs, NLP, or search.
- Proven track record of building and shipping ML‑powered or GenAI‑integrated products.
- Hands‑on experience with retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG), embeddings, hybrid retrieval, or agentic workflows.
- Strong background in scaling ML systems from prototype to production.

• Skills
- Expert‑level knowledge of GenAI ecosystems (OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, OSS) and fine‑tuning/serving frameworks.
- Deep technical skills across modeling, infrastructure, and orchestration (Lang Chain, Llama Index, vector DBs).
- Strong prototyping ability, balancing speed with rigor in experimentation.
- Ability to set technical direction and inspire peers with thought leadership.

• Education
- Master’s or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or related fields.

Nice to Have

• Experience with multimodal models, knowledge graphs, or semantic embeddings.

• Familiarity with evaluation metrics for search/GenAI (NDCG, groundedness, human preference modeling).

• Contributions to open‑source ML frameworks or GenAI research communities.

• Passion for mentoring and fostering innovation.

Compensation

At Atlassian, we strive to design equitable, explainable, and competitive compensation programs. The baseline of our range is higher than that of the typical market range, but we expect to hire most candidates near this baseline. Base pay within the range is ultimately determined by a candidate’s skills, expertise, or experience. In the United States, we have three geographic pay zones:

• Zone A: USD 232,200 - USD 303,150

• Zone B: USD 209,700 - USD 273,775

• Zone C: USD 193,500 - USD 252,625

This role may also be eligible for benefits, bonuses, commissions, and equity. Please visit /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.

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…