Lead Content Designer, Atlassian App Foundations and Patterns

Are you a systems thinker who thrives on bringing clarity and cohesion to complex product ecosystems through exceptional content design? Do you love shaping foundational patterns, guiding teams to create consistent and intuitive experiences, and helping teams raise the bar for content quality? Atlassian is looking for a Lead Content Designer to join the App Foundations and Patterns team.
This team is responsible for core navigation elements and foundational patterns that power Atlassian's portfolio of applications - including the App Switcher, Universal Create, Account Switcher, Left Navigation, and new patterns like widgets, tables, and preview panels. These elements are critical to how users navigate and complete work across our products.
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. Interviews and onboarding are conducted virtually, a part of being a distributed-first company.
This is a hands-on leadership role requiring both strong craft skills and systems thinking. You'll set the content design direction for foundational patterns, build reusable guidance, and help designers across Atlassian apply that guidance to their own products - with a particular focus on improving the Admin experience through content clarity and better pattern adoption.

• Own the content design strategy for core navigation and foundational patterns across all products, partnering with design, product, engineering, and Content Design Operations to ensure alignment with the Atlassian Design System.
• Partner with the Head of Product Design to shape the roadmap for global navigation and foundational patterns, making sure content clarity, terminology consistency, and ease of use are prioritized.
• Create foundational content guidance for key patterns like Left Navigation, App Switcher, Universal Create, Account Switcher, and emerging elements like widgets, tables, and preview panels, so every team has clear, reusable content guidelines to follow.
• Lead content design efforts that modernize the Admin app, ensuring that updated patterns and clearer terminology help admins understand and confidently navigate the surfaces they rely on.
• Provide hands-on content design leadership during the rollout of Nav iterations, Admin visual refreshes, and the evolution of Admin's information architecture, ensuring that updated patterns and flows are easier to understand and faster to complete.
• Establish a contribution model that enables product teams contributing to Admin and global navigation to apply and influence content guidance, so every product team works from a shared content playbook.
• Own the content guidance for Admin, ensuring that admin-specific patterns are well-documented, clear, and aligned with our broader design language.
• Mentor content designers across Atlassian, particularly those working on Admin and global surfaces, helping them apply guidance correctly and improve craft quality.
• Collaborate with Content Design Operations to make sure content guidance is easy to find and follow within the design system documentation.
• Work with research and data teams to establish content quality metrics for global patterns and Admin-specific flows, using insights to continuously improve content guidance.
• Act as a content design advocate in design reviews, critiques, and leadership conversations, ensuring that content clarity is treated as a core part of design quality - not an afterthought.

What We're Looking For

• 10+ years of experience in content design, UX writing, or content strategy, with at least 3+ years working on complex systems or platforms.
• Experience creating content guidance for design systems or pattern libraries, with examples of your work being used by multiple teams or products.
• Strong writing, editing, and structuring skills, with a focus on making complex administrative tasks easier and clearer through great content design.
• Experience working with federated design teams, helping distributed product teams align on consistent terminology, voice, and user-centered content decisions.
• Strong collaboration skills, especially when partnering with design systems teams, product designers, and content design operations.
• Ability to influence without authority, guiding teams to apply and adopt content guidance and explaining why clarity and consistency matter.
• Experience mentoring and coaching other content designers, helping them grow their craft.
• Comfort working in ambiguous spaces, setting clear direction when patterns, terminology, and workflows are evolving.
• Familiarity with tools like Figma and Confluence, with the ability to create clear, usable content guidelines within design documentation.
• Bonus: Experience defining and tracking content quality metrics, and using data to measure and improve content clarity and effectiveness over time.

Compensation
At Atlassian, we strive to design equitable, explainable, and competitive compensation programs. To support this goal, the baseline of our range is higher than that of the typical market range, but in turn we expect to hire most candidates near this baseline. Base pay within the range is ultimately determined by a candidate's skills, expertise, or experience. 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: $210,000 - $280,000
Zone B: $189,000 - $252,000
Zone C: $174,300 - $232,400
This role may also be eligible for benefits, bonuses, commissions, and equity.
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.
Our perks & benefits
Atlassian offers a variety of perks and benefits to support you, your family and to help you engage with your local community. Our offerings include health coverage, paid volunteer days, wellness resources, and so much more. Visit go.atlassian.com/perksandbenefits to learn more.
About Atlassian
At Atlassian, we're motivated by a common goal: to unleash the potential of every team. Our software products help teams all over the planet and our solutions are designed for all types of work. Team collaboration through our tools makes what may be impossible alone, possible together.
We believe that the unique contributions of all Atlassians create our success. To ensure that our products and culture continue to incorporate everyone's perspectives and experience, we never discriminate based on race, religion, national origin, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, or marital, veteran, or disability status. All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.
To provide you the best experience, we can support with accommodations or adjustments at any stage of the recruitment process. Simply inform our Recruitment team during your conversation with them.
To learn more about our culture and hiring process, visit go.atlassian.com/crh .