Our people

Mike Cannon-Brookes is the co-founder and co-CEO of Atlassian.

Mike has received international recognition for his work, including the "€˜Australian IT Professional of the Year"€™ award in 2004, and "Australian Entrepreneur Of The Year"€™ in 2006. He's been honored by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader in 2009 and is currently a member of The Forum of Young Global Leaders. He was also recognized on Fortune's 40 under 40 list alongside Scott in 2016.

Outside Atlassian, Mike is an active angel investor and a non-executive director of Tyro, a technology-focused Australian bank. He serves as an adjunct professor at the University of New South Wales' School of Computer Science and Engineering, as well as chair of the Computer Science and Engineering Industry Advisory Board.

Mike holds a Bachelor of Commerce in information systems from the University of New South Wales, Australia.

Scott Farquhar is the co-founder and co-CEO of Atlassian.

Scott was awarded the ‘Australian IT Professional of the Year’ in 2004, and in 2006 was the youngest person ever to be awarded the ‘Australian Entrepreneur of the Year’ by Ernst & Young alongside co-founder and co-CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes. Scott was also awarded the Corporate Social Responsibility Award in 2011 by the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) – Atlassian donates 1% of profit, product, equity and employee time to charity, helping thousands of children in developing countries receive an education. In 2016, he and Mike were recognized on Fortune's 40 under 40 list.

Scott is a widely sought-after keynote speaker and has addressed audiences at conferences and events in Australia and around the globe. Scott actively participates in the Sydney startup scene, contributes to Australian seed fund StartMate and venture capital fund Blackbird Ventures, mentors women through the Australian Business Women’s mentoring program and lectures on entrepreneurship at the University of New South Wales.

Scott holds a Bachelor of Science in business information technology from the University of New South Wales, Australia, and is a member of YPO and the Australian School of Business Alumni Leaders Network.

Jay Simons is the president of Atlassian. 

He joined the company in 2008 as vice president of sales and marketing to lead Atlassian's pioneering efforts to develop a high-velocity, low-touch sales model. Jay's overseen the company's global expansion, introduction of its Starter License program (a disruptive approach to "freemium" where the company donates all proceeds to a charitable cause), and its growing worldwide customer community and programs.

Jay has more than 20 years of experience in the software industry. He began his career at Plumtree Software where he held a variety of senior marketing and sales roles. Significantly, Jay oversaw the company's expansion throughout Europe and Asia Pacific. When Plumtree was acquired by BEA Systems in 2005, Jay became vice president of marketing for BEA Systems, which was later acquired by Oracle in 2008.

Jay serves on the board of directors for HubSpot and holds a bachelor's degree in political and environmental science from the University of Washington.

Tom Kennedy is the chief legal officer (CLO) at Atlassian.

Tom has more than 17 years of experience counseling technology companies. Prior to joining Atlassian as its first lawyer in 2011, Tom served as senior vice president and general counsel at BigFix, Inc., a security software company, where he built the legal department that directed the sale of the company to IBM. Prior to BigFix, Tom spent seven years at Cooley LLP where he counseled a variety of technology companies throughout their lifecycle, from formation to becoming a public company and everything in between.

Tom holds a Doctor of Law degree (JD) from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law and a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Sri Viswanath is the chief technology officer (CTO) at Atlassian.

Before joining Atlassian, Sri served as CTO and senior vice president of engineering at Groupon, Inc. Prior to Groupon, he was the vice president of research and development for mobile computing at VMware, a provider of cloud and virtualization software and services. Sri also served as senior vice president of engineering at Ning Inc. and managed the application development, platform engineering, and operations teams responsible for innovating and scaling the Ning Platform. He was instrumental in Ning's acquisition by Glam. Previous to Ning, Sri led development of a number of very successful open-source and business-to-business products at Sun Microsystems.

Sri serves on the board of directors of SendGrid and holds an M.S. in Computer Science from Clemson University and a management degree from Stanford University.

Helen Russell is the chief people officer (CPO) of Atlassian.

As CPO, Helen has global responsibility for the attraction, engagement, development, and experience of Atlassian's most important asset – its people. She champions Atlassian's mission: 'to unlock the potential of every team,' playing a critical role in enabling the company 'to be the ultimate team.' With a growing employee base, Helen enables Atlassian to scale, while retaining the very elements that have made the company so successful to date.

Helen brings 20 years of people leadership experience across multiple industries, geographies, and scale of businesses. Prior to joining Atlassian, Helen served as CHRO of Sonos Inc., a leader in the home sound system space and CHRO of Kantar, one of the world's largest research, data and insight consultancies. From 2005 to 2010, Helen served as VP HR EMEA for Yahoo Inc. and from 2000 to 2005 as VP HR EMEA for Siebel Systems, an enterprise software company, acquired by Oracle in 2005.

As an HR executive, Helen's passion is around culture. She has had the opportunity to work alongside Professor Charles O'Reilly and Dr. Peter Finkelstein, both of Stanford Graduate School of Business and leading experts in the leadership and culture space. She is an advisor to a number of smaller businesses, as well as a mentor to a number of emerging HR professionals and executives across the globe. Helen holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Liverpool, England.

James Beer is the chief financial officer (CFO) at Atlassian, overseeing all of Atlassian's finance and IT organizations. 

Before joining Atlassian, James served as executive vice president and CFO of McKesson Corporation, a Fortune 10 healthcare services and information technology company. During his four-year tenure at McKesson, James was responsible for all of the company's financial functions and was a member of the executive committee. Between 2006 and 2013, James was executive vice president and CFO of Symantec Corporation, where he managed the worldwide finance organization. Previous to his work at Symantec, James was chief financial officer of AMR Corporation and American Airlines, AMR’s principal subsidiary. In his 15 years at American Airlines, James held a variety of management positions in finance and marketing operations, including leading the airline’s European and Asia Pacific businesses. 

James holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Imperial College, London University, and a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School.

He currently serves on the board of directors for Alaska Air Group, parent company of Alaska Airlines and Virgin America, and ForeScout Technologies, Inc. He is also a member of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco's Economic Advisory Council.