Enterprise SaaS
10 Atlassian engineering leaders
These ten Atlassian engineering leaders hold senior vice president, vice president, director and head of engineering roles across Atlassian's AI, Jira, Confluence, identity and growth teams. Readers can learn from them how Atlassian organizes and runs engineering for its AI features, core products and shared platforms.
Professionals to explore
01—10Brendan Haire
LinkedInExperience: VP Engineering of AI Platform and AI Chat Agents · Atlassian
VP Engineering of AI Platform and AI Chat Agents at Atlassian since October 2024; his profile says he leads the engineering team driving Atlassian's AI strategy through improved search, information retrieval and AI conversational agents across its products. He was Head of Engineering for Search and AI Conversation (2023–2024) and Head of Engineering for Collaboration Platform (2020–2023) at Atlassian.
Derek Cheng
LinkedInExperience: SVP Engineering · Atlassian
SVP Engineering at Atlassian since June 2026, a role in which his profile says he works with the engineering teams for Jira. As VP Head of Engineering at Atlassian from 2023 to 2024 he led engineering teams including those for Compass, Bitbucket and Dev Agents, and he was VP, Content Verticals at Microsoft from 2022 to 2023.
Govi Bacthavachalu
LinkedInExperience: VP Head of Engineering · Atlassian
VP Head of Engineering at Atlassian since November 2023. Bacthavachalu was Director Of Engineering - Data and Cloud Platform at Uber from 2021 to 2022, and at Amazon held the roles Head of Engineering Last Mile Routing AI Platform (2019–2021), Head of Engineering Alexa ML Platform (2016–2019) and Head of Engineering Amazon Fresh Systems (2014–2016).
Guihong Cao
LinkedInExperience: Senior Vice President of Engineering · Atlassian
Senior Vice President of Engineering at Atlassian since August 2026; his profile headline reads VP of Engineering, Rovo&AI at Atlassian and says he leads the engineering team of Atlassian AI, driving the company's AI strategy, execution and R&D. He was GM at Microsoft Bing from 2021 to 2023 and Partner Group Engineering Manager at Microsoft from 2018 to 2021.
Ilia Fainshtroy
LinkedInExperience: Head of Engineering, Confluence Cloud · Atlassian
Head of Engineering, Confluence Cloud at Atlassian since October 2024; his profile headline reads Head of Engineering / Director, Confluence Cloud and cites platform, performance and developer productivity, engineering strategy, org design and cross-org execution. He was Senior Software Engineering Manager, Confluence Cloud (2022–2024) and Software Engineering Manager, Confluence Cloud (2018–2022) at Atlassian.
Kahren Tevosyan
LinkedInExperience: VP Head of Engineering · Atlassian
VP Head of Engineering at Atlassian since October 2025, where his profile says he leads the Identity and Tenant Platform organization. He was Vice President of Engineering, Azure Core Security Services at Microsoft from 2022 to 2025 and Partner Group Engineering Manager, Microsoft Azure Security Services from 2013 to 2022.
Ningyue Zhao
LinkedInExperience: Director of Software Engineering, Confluence · Atlassian
Head of Software Engineering, Confluence at Atlassian since March 2025. Zhao was Director of Software Engineering, Confluence at Atlassian from 2023 to 2025 and Director of Engineering, Product Growth from 2021 to 2023, and held the role Engineering Manager at Atlassian from 2019 to 2021.
Pablo Ganga
LinkedInExperience: Director, Head of Engineering - Growth · Atlassian
Director, Head of Engineering - Growth at Atlassian since December 2024; his profile says he is responsible for the capabilities that drive engagement through cross-channel messaging at scale for all Atlassian products. He was Director Of Engineering at Dropbox from 2020 to 2024 and Software Development Manager at Amazon from 2015 to 2020.
Reena Agarwal
LinkedInExperience: VP, Engineering · Atlassian
VP, Engineering at Atlassian since March 2024; her profile headline cites AI and large-scale distributed systems. She was Director, Software Development - Shopping Experience Foundations at Amazon from 2016 to 2024 and Principal Engineering Manager - Windows Azure Identity at Microsoft from 2013 to 2016.
Taroon Mandhana
LinkedInExperience: SVP Head of Engineering - AI & Products · Atlassian
SVP Head of Engineering - AI & Products at Atlassian since December 2022; his profile headline reads CTO, AI & Teamwork at Atlassian, and the role description says he leads engineering for the Atlassian product portfolio and all things AI. He was Corporate Vice President at Microsoft from 2020 to 2022 and has been a Distinguished Fellow at Fellows Fund since 2025.
Choose the right perspective
Match the leader's area to your question, for example an AI platform leader for questions about building AI features or a platform leader for identity, storage or reliability questions. Consider the size of the organization each person runs, since practices that work for a single product team differ from those for a multi-product group.
Questions to take into the conversation
- 01How does a software company structure engineering teams to ship AI features across several products at once?
- 02How do engineering leaders balance platform work such as identity and storage against product feature delivery?
- 03What does a head of engineering at a large SaaS company own, and how is engineering performance measured?
Reaching Atlassian engineering leaders
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About this directory
This is a professional research starting point based on business profile data retrieved on . Titles and companies reflect that source snapshot and may describe past or present roles. Check the linked profiles for current details. Inclusion does not imply Instant Expert membership or availability.
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