Software Engineering Leadership Advisor, DX

Atlassian is a leading SaaS company focused on enhancing developer productivity and experience. They are seeking a Software Engineering Leadership Advisor to assist senior engineering leaders in making informed decisions about developer productivity and the impact of AI on their organizations.

Responsibilities:

• 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
• You’ll Be Expected To Produce What you’ll need to be comfortable with
• 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
• Leading 1:1 and small-group conversations with CTOs, VPs of Engineering, Heads of Platform/DevEx, and Staff+ ICs
• Asking sharp questions, quickly understanding an organization’s context, and diagnosing where productivity and DevEx issues actually sit (process, platform, culture, org design, etc.)
• Providing pragmatic, opinionated advice on how to make progress – without overstepping into generic management consulting or vague recommendations
• Facilitating workshops, executive briefings, or working sessions to help customers design or refine their DevEx and productivity programs
• Spotting patterns across conversations and separating anecdotes from real signals
• Working with DX’s data, research team, and product telemetry where needed to cross-check and strengthen your conclusions
• Turning messy, qualitative input into clear narratives, frameworks, and recommendations that are both credible and immediately useful
• Writing clear, concise, and compelling reports, briefs, and essays that senior engineering leaders will actually read
• Collaborating with editors, designers, and marketers to turn insights into polished, high-impact artifacts
• Representing DX’s perspective in talks, panels, podcasts, and webinars as needed, often using your advisory work as source material
• Partnering closely with sales, customer success, and product to:
• Identify the right leaders to talk to
• Feed insights back into DX’s roadmap and messaging
• Ensure the right people see and use the content you create
• Working with DX Research to align advisory narratives with our broader research themes and findings

Requirements:

• 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
• 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