The interview process had 7 steps:
- phone call with recruiter
- 2 coding interviews 1 hour each with 15 minutes break
- 1 hour System Design
- 1 hour Craft
- 45 minutes Values
- 1 hour with the Engineering Manager of the team I was going to join
I know the amount of them might be different depending on the level you're applying for.
The recruiter was really great - talked to me a lot, never left me without updates for weeks (like some people do), usually send me some message almost daily to keep me informed on how things are going. He was also very polite and friendly. Atlassian also has nice preparation guide to give you some time in advance to think about topics to share (no week-long unpaid homework).
The interviews themselves are great too - all people were friendly, asked pretty good and relevant questions, and encourage the open discussion rather than exam. There wasn't enough time to ask all the questions, but people were happy to stay a bit longer, which is much appreciated. I will add a bit more specificity about some steps below.
The coding interviews were not so much about coding (some basic stuff was involved for sure), but rather about teamwork, engineering practices, ability to explain things and to think about different edge cases, which I always value myself.
Both System Design and Craft interviews are about Engineering + Product mindset - how you think about customer, performance, security, UX, etc. while building the product.
Values were... well, more or less classic values interview, conflicts, communication style, finding agreement and getting buy-ins, etc.
The last one was probably a mix of everything before (except coding) specific for the team you're planning to join.
To summarise some good things:
- friendly people which make you feel relaxed
- pragmatic questions aligned with your daily responsibilities - nothing like "write this algorithm which you'll never going to use on paper from you memory in 30 seconds"
- no attempts to push you or show that interviewer is the smartest person in the room
- prompt communication, quick interview scheduling
- no requests to send a CV (it's available in LinkedIn, but people still ask it all the time), cover letter (hello 19th century lovers) or reference letters
A little thing to maybe improve - there are a lot of steps, and in quite a few places they are overlapping with each other. Maybe worth checking if the process can be shortened a bit.