Rajeev Rajan (CTO @ Atlassian) shares the leadership playbook he used to transform Atlassian’s engineering culture, and how that cultural foundation directly powered the build and launch of Rovo (Atlassian’s new AI powered app). We cover how they reduced ship time from 120 days to zero, why “developer joy” is the metric that matters, and how to create a community of developer productivity champions to scale DevEx transformation. Rajeev also breaks down his principles for systematizing autonomy and empowerment, including frameworks for giving direct reports more ownership. Plus, a look at the future of Atlassian’s “Systems of Work”!
Rajeev Rajan is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Atlassian. Rajeev joined the company in May 2022 and is responsible for Atlassian Engineering, IT, Security and Trust, and the Engineering Operations teams. His focus areas include the company's continued transformation to Cloud, Developer Platform, and Product lines. Additionally, he is passionate about continuing to develop Atlassian’s world-class engineering organization and making it a top choice for aspiring engineering talent worldwide.
A long-time resident of Washington state, Rajeev previously acted as the Vice President and Head of Engineering for Facebook and Head of Office for Meta in the Pacific Northwest Region. Prior to Meta, Rajeev spent more than two decades with Microsoft, first joining as an intern in 1994. During his time there, he worked on many products, culminating in Office 365 where he built and led the team responsible for all of the Cloud Infrastructure for Office 365.
Rajeev is married with two children and a spunky yellow lab named Rayna. He is very involved in and passionate about a number of efforts that uplift the local community, ranging from the arts to STEM programs.
SHOW NOTES:
- The "Listening Tour": Grounding leadership in reality and identifying friction points (3:52)
- The Confluence Editor story: Reducing ship time from 120 days to 0 (6:26)
- Moving beyond productivity: Why "Developer Joy" is the metric that matters (8:45)
- Creating a community of Developer Productivity Champions and the power of a Productivity Summit (13:44)
- Elevating productivity to a company-level OKR and measuring qualitative sentiment (17:12)
- Leadership framework: Deciding when to "manage through people" vs. "manage through process" (19:05)
- How to give more direct ownership / responsibility to a DRI (23:03)
- Alignment conversations about prioritizing developer joy & productivity (24:22)
- Challenges faced during Atlassian’s developer joy transformation journey (26:23)
- How the "Developer Joy" foundation enabled building Rovo in just 6 months (30:02)
- The "System of Work": Expanding Jira's utility beyond engineering to finance, marketing, and legal (33:22)
- Rapid Fire Questions (40:48)
This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:
Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/5
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The Engineering Leadership Podcast 
