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Role Description

We’re looking for a Software Engineering Leadership Advisor (remote – US) to help senior engineering leaders make better decisions about developer productivity, developer experience, and the impact of AI on their organizations. This role is part of the DX Research Team, whose mission is to advance how the world understands and improves developer productivity. This team turns data, research, and real-world stories into actionable insights that help engineering leaders make better decisions — and in doing so, reinforces DX as the trusted source of truth in developer productivity.

• Spend time talking with customers and prospects – understanding their org structures, processes, metrics, and constraints – and advising CTOs, VPs of Engineering, and platform leaders on how to design and run effective developer productivity and DevEx programs.
• Turn what you’re seeing and hearing across customers into high-signal written content: frameworks, playbooks, and narratives that other leaders can learn from.
• Partner closely with DX’s research, product, marketing, and sales teams to ensure what we publish reflects both customer reality and DX’s point of view.

Responsibilities

You’ll be expected to produce:

• Two “small ships” per month – quick, high-signal pieces that capture one strong insight or idea emerging from advisory work. For example:
  • A pattern you’re seeing across several customers (e.g., “how top-performing teams are actually using AI in code review”).
  • A short, practical brief synthesizing learnings from a set of leadership conversations on a topic (e.g., “how VPs of Eng are reshaping their metrics stack in 2025”).
  • A concise framework or decision guide (e.g., “when to centralize vs. decentralize platform engineering”).
• One “big ship” per quarter – a flagship piece that composes multiple customer stories, themes, and data points into something that reframes how leaders think about a problem. That might include:
  • A DX Leadership Playbook for running a DevEx program.
  • A state-of-the-practice report on how engineering orgs are using AI.
  • A deep-dive framework that becomes the default way leaders talk about a complex topic (e.g., “the maturity model for developer productivity programs”).
  • A cohesive guide that pulls together several “small ships” into a single, end-to-end resource.

Qualifications

• Significant experience (often 7–10+ years) in one or more of: Engineering leadership (e.g., Director / VP of Eng, Head of Platform/DevEx); Technical consulting or advisory work with software organizations; Developer productivity, developer experience, or related socio-technical/system design roles.
• Comfortable operating at the executive level. You can earn the trust of CTOs and VPs of Engineering, ask hard questions, and withstand scrutiny.
• Proven ability to turn conversations and field experience into artifacts – whether that’s internal playbooks, strategy memos, industry reports, or widely read essays.
• Strong at structuring complex problems and explaining them in a way that is clear and grounded, and actionable.
• Low ego, high ownership. You care more about the quality and impact of the work than about credit. You’re comfortable doing both the visible and invisible parts of this job.
• Opinionated but open-minded. You’re willing to take a stand, but you update your views when the evidence changes.

Requirements

• Experience inside large engineering organizations or platform teams, particularly where you’ve worked on developer productivity, DevEx, or engineering effectiveness.
• Prior roles as a Field CTO, Deputy CTO, Principal Engineer, or similar where you regularly met with customers or internal stakeholders in an advisory capacity.
• Experience working alongside product, marketing, and sales to turn insights into narratives, go-to-market programs, or feature direction.
• A network of senior engineering leaders and practitioners you can tap for feedback and collaboration.

Benefits

• 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.