Interning as a designer at Atlassian
Hey! I’m Samarth Dhanuka, a fourth-year student at IDC School of Design who recently wrapped up an amazing internship at Atlassian. Over the past few semesters, I’ve been diving deep into designing digital and tangible experiences, after exploring different design disciplines early on. In my third year, I got the chance to intern as a Product Design Intern at Atlassian, marking my first step into the corporate world. I knew it would be very different from the design work I’d done in college, and I hope sharing my experience here gives you some useful insights for your own internships.
Why Atlassian?
Honestly, I hadn’t heard of Atlassian before their pre-internship talk. As a B2B company, they weren’t on my radar. But the talk gave me a solid understanding of their work and the potential intern projects. Being product-based, Atlassian aligned with my skills and interests. The HR team and designers were super approachable, and their focus on work culture really stood out to me. I also spoke to seniors who had interned there, and they all gave glowing reviews. Atlassian’s hybrid work culture was a big plus for me. Their office is in Bangalore, which is where I live, so I knew I’d get to experience both remote work and in-office life.
Gearing Up for Interviews
Preparing for the internship was intense! Design projects with strong processes and outcomes happen in the third year, so I juggled project work and portfolio building simultaneously. Senior resumes provided formatting and content insights, and I refined my own resume countless times, making multiple versions. When the intern application forms (IAFs) opened, my portfolio was finally looking good.
Atlassian’s pre-internship talk offered valuable resources, including blogs on the design interviews. These covered potential questions, focus areas, presentation timing, and common interview mistakes. Based on many interview tips videos and seniors’ advice, what I had learnt was that it is important to focus on the process, but a blog from an Atlassian employee had pointed that students often misunderstand this tip and end up talking only about the processes they followed in the project and rarely talk about the outcome of the process which is equally important as a designer. This along with other blogs helped me choose the right project and presentation style.
Atlassian’s selection process had three rounds. The first was an introductory round, where I talked about myself and discussed a product design I admired. The second round was a 30-minute project presentation. Based on the blog I’d read, I made sure to focus on both the process and the final result of my project. My interviewer’s familiarity with my project’s domain was both helpful and challenging, in the sense that he could quickly grasp what my project was and I could glide through the presentation, but also since he was experienced he could get into deeper details and mistakes. All-in-all we had a great discussion. The final round was a values interview, where they asked situational and experience-based questions to see if I aligned with Atlassian’s company culture. My main advice for juniors? Be confident, open to feedback, and don’t get too defensive!
The internship experience
Interning at Atlassian was awesome! I was initially nervous about whether I’d fit in and if my skills were up to the mark, but between getting selected and starting the internship, Atlassian held several sessions that addressed these and eased my concerns because almost every student feels the same. The first few weeks were remote since most of my team worked from home, which worked out great (because, let’s be real, Bangalore traffic is no joke!). And thanks to a great mentor and teammates for being so welcoming!
I worked on Integrations in Jira Service Management. Understanding the complex system took time, but a sandbox environment helped me grasp my assigned user journey. I was suggested to not get into understanding the entire product because that is an extremely complicated piece and just understanding integrations would be enough (so that I would not be overwhelmed). I started with a competitor analysis to understand what other companies were doing in this space. The analysis was done through articles, videos and using competitor softwares. With my mentor’s help, I compiled a detailed report that would serve as a comprehensive resource for anyone who will work on this feature in the future.
Over the last few weeks of the internship, I designed three new user journeys for the feature, each varying in the amount of resources Atlassian would need to implement them, and more resources meant better design. These were presented during design crits, where the team, including designers from India and Turkey, gave feedback on the journey, the visuals and even gave examples from existing features in Jira which used similar components, which meant I could maintain consistency and save some time and energy. I did the final presentation of my internship work that included global trends in the Integrations space, the three varying levels of user journey using medium-high fidelity prototypes and the complete interactive component set for the new journeys.
The office was also really fun, and there’s a new one opening soon, so if you get the chance, definitely check it out!
Learnings
In this internship, though the part I worked on was small and may not immediately reflect in their product, there was so much I would have never learnt in college. Understanding feasibility, collaboration within a large design system, focussing on a single cog of the machine, working with a pre-defined design system and restricting myself to those components, learning about the uses of different components, what each of their function is, compatibility with other journeys and functions in the product, uniformity, visual language, resource-profit dynamics, communicating designs quickly because everyone’s time is valuable, and so much more. There was also a lot more that I wanted to learn such as collaborating with engineers and developers which I couldn’t because of the short duration, but it might have been overwhelming anyway.
Beyond work
Since most people at Atlassian work remotely, the “outside of work” activities were virtual meetups with designers from different teams. These sessions were really fun—some people shared personal projects like designing fonts or international tour journals! I got to introduce myself through sitcom GIFs and talk a bit about my college work. We also had sessions with senior designers, who spoke about their career journeys and offered career insights beyond Atlassian, catering to diverse aspirations. These meetups were a great way to network and have fun, and I’d highly recommend joining in.
Advice to juniors
I had already pointed at some things to keep in mind while pursuing internships. To add a few more tips for juniors who are looking to intern at Atlassian or any other place:
- Ask questions whenever you can, and especially when they ask if you have any questions for them. Before sitting for the interview, think of a few questions you would like to ask them. What is it to work like at the company, what is the work pressure like, are there any pre-requisite skills or softwares they would recommend you familiarise yourself with, what specifically your role requires etc. Even in the initial meetings with your manager, ask what is expected of you from the internship, what are the outcomes, how often would they like to set meetups etc. Not asking questions may be seen as you being clueless or not as curious about the internship.
- It is difficult to produce a full-fledged work in a short duration, especially since a lot of time goes into understanding the existing systems and area of work, and the companies are well aware of this, so don’t worry if you think your work is not getting implemented right away or if you couldn’t create high-fidelity prototypes that are ready to go. But to make sure that your work doesn’t go to waste, do whatever you have done with good documentation, show all your research, all your decisions and reasons, so that later when the work is picked up, they don’t have to start over.
- Don’t be scared of feedback. Take all feedback as a learning opportunity. Sometimes the feedback might come in harsh words but don’t upset yourself over it, only look at what in the design looks flawed to them and understand why. Talk to your co-interns, your mentor or whoever can help put those in nicer words if that’ll take the pressure off.
