Principal Machine Learning System Engineer

Working at Atlassian
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As a Principal Machine Learning Systems Engineer on the Search Platform team, you set the technical direction for search infrastructure that powers Rovo, Jira, Confluence, and the broader Atlassian AI platform. You operate with broad organizational influence, driving outcomes across teams and functions without relying on positional authority.
Technical Vision & Cross-Team Leadership Define and champion the multi-year technical roadmap for search serving, vector infrastructure, and agentic retrieval. Identify architectural inflection points - such as the evolution from keyword to semantic search, or the shift toward retrieval-for-agents - and build organizational consensus around the right path forward. You earn alignment through technical credibility, clear reasoning, and the ability to make complex tradeoffs legible to engineers, product managers, and senior leadership alike.
Leading Without Authority Drive high-impact initiatives across teams that do not report to you. Influence peers, partner teams, and stakeholders by framing problems compellingly, co-authoring shared technical strategies, and creating forums - deep dives, design reviews, working groups - where the best ideas win on merit. Navigate ambiguity and competing priorities across the Search Platform, ML Platform, AI Gateway, and Rovo product teams to keep critical cross-functional programs on track.
Agentic Search & Retrieval Architecture Own the technical strategy for retrieval systems that ground Rovo agents and AI workflows, including personalized indexes, multi-step retrieval pipelines, and RAG infrastructure at scale. Anticipate how agentic use cases will stress existing search architecture and proactively design for those requirements before they become blockers.
Platform Scalability & Operational Excellence Set the standard for production ML serving, cost discipline, and reliability across the search stack. Drive FinOps-oriented decisions - such as vector cluster right-sizing and query embedding caching - that deliver material infrastructure savings without sacrificing SLO targets.
Engineering Craft & Mentorship Raise the technical bar across the organization through code review, design feedback, and sponsoring the growth of senior engineers toward principal-level impact.
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.
Please visit go.atlassian.com/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.
This role may also be eligible for benefits, bonuses, commissions, and equity.
In The United States, we have three geographic pay zones. For this role, our current base pay ranges for new hires in each zone are:
Zone A: $209,700 - $273,775
Zone B: $188,730 - $246,398
Zone C: $174,051 - $227,233
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 community. Our offerings include health and wellbeing resources, paid volunteer days, and so much more. To learn more, visit go.atlassian.com/perksandbenefits .
About Atlassian
At Atlassian, we're motivated by a common goal: to unleash the potential of every team. Our software products help teams all over the planet and our solutions are designed for all types of work. Team collaboration through our tools makes what may be impossible alone, possible together.
We believe that the unique contributions of all Atlassians create our success. To ensure that our products and culture continue to incorporate everyone's perspectives and experience, we never discriminate based on race, religion, national origin, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, or marital, veteran, or disability status. All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.
To provide you the best experience, we can support with accommodations or adjustments at any stage of the recruitment process. Simply inform our Recruitment team during your conversation with them.
To learn more about our culture and hiring process, visit go.atlassian.com/crh .
In line with local law, identity verification (which may include use of biometric data) is a condition of employment with Atlassian for employment fraud purposes.