This listing pays about $272,865 a year. Across 36 open principal machine learning engineer listings that state pay, the middle half runs $212,500 to $315,000 and the median is $265,500. That is inside the middle half of those listings, 3% above the median.

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Share of this job’s tasks that AI is already used for at work, from real usage. It is not a forecast of job loss, and a low number means no use seen yet. Source: Anthropic Economic Index.

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About the job

Overview

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.

As a Principal Machine Learning Engineer in the Confluence AI organization, you will help shape the next generation of AI-powered experiences across Confluence. This is a hands-on principal-level role for an engineer who can turn fast-moving advances in machine learning into high-quality product experiences that reach customers at scale.

You will work across product, platform, and partner teams to define technical direction, solve ambiguous problems, and deliver AI capabilities that improve how users create, edit, discover, and interact with content. The role spans the full stack of AI product development, from model-informed product design and evaluation strategy to production engineering, experimentation, and long-term technical leadership.

This role is especially well suited for someone who combines strong machine learning depth with product instinct and systems thinking. Success in this position means not only building sophisticated AI systems, but also identifying the highest-value opportunities, raising engineering standards, and helping multiple teams move faster and with more confidence.

Responsibilities

Set technical direction for machine learning and AI initiatives that power Confluence experiences across areas such as content creation, editing, summarization, recommendations, and multimodal interaction.

Design, build, and evolve production-grade ML systems, evaluation workflows, experimentation loops, and supporting infrastructure that enable reliable delivery of AI features at scale.

Lead the development of customer-facing AI capabilities by translating ambiguous product opportunities into practical technical strategies, measurable outcomes, and shipped experiences.

Drive advances in areas such as model behavior, retrieval, ranking, prompt and workflow design, automated evaluation, quality measurement, and system reliability.

Partner closely with engineering, product, design, analytics, and platform teams to align on priorities, influence roadmaps, and deliver cross-organizational initiatives.

Identify systemic product or model failure modes, develop interventions, and close the loop between technical improvements and customer impact through experimentation and data-driven iteration.

Make high-leverage architectural decisions across application layers, balancing model quality, latency, cost, safety, maintainability, and user experience.

Contribute as a deeply hands-on engineer when needed, including prototyping, implementation, debugging, and guiding complex production rollouts.

Raise the bar for principal-level engineering by mentoring other engineers, leading design reviews, improving technical quality, and establishing reusable patterns that benefit multiple teams.

Help build the foundations that allow Confluence AI teams to ship deeper, more integrated AI experiences across editor surfaces, content types, and collaborative workflows.

Pay Ranges

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 : $236,700 - $309,025

Zone B : $213,030 - $278,123

Zone C : $196,461 - $256,491

Qualifications

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 or Remote , we have three geographic pay zones. For this role, our current base pay ranges for new hires in each zone are:

Zone A : $236,700 - $309,025

Zone B : $213,030 - $278,123

Zone C : $196,461 - $256,491