Is Atlassian’s India Design Team the New Blueprint for Global Collaboration?

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Let’s be honest—most people don’t associate “design innovation” with back-end-heavy enterprise software. Jira, Confluence, Trello… they’re tools you use, not tools you fall in love with. But what if that’s changing?

Atlassian, the Australian-born giant known for powering the world’s teams, is quietly letting its India Design team lead a silent revolution. And it’s not just about making things “look good.” It’s about building systems that scale with clarity, communicate with intention, and feel human, even when you’re deep in DevOps.

Craft. Communication. Trust.

Three words. Endless complexity.

Under the leadership of Divye Bokdia, Head of Design, India, Atlassian’s design philosophy is moving from pixel-pushing to problem-solving at scale. He’s not your run-of-the-mill design executive. Educated at IIT Guwahati and the University of Michigan, Divye isn’t afraid to mix rigor with empathy. He believes, “Design isn’t just about aesthetics—it’s about making complexity invisible.”

His approach? Break the problem. Rebuild the craft with data.

While some design teams obsess over trends, Atlassian India is focused on systems thinking and scalable design languages that serve millions of users. Every time you move from Jira to Confluence and feel like “you never left,” that’s not magic. That’s deliberate, obsessive, borderline perfectionist design engineering.

The quiet power of the system of work

Here’s where it gets exciting.

Atlassian isn’t just shipping tools anymore—they’re building what they call a System of Work (SoW). It’s not a feature. It’s an ideology. SoW brings data, workflows, collaboration, and AI into a connected product ecosystem. Think: real-time insights, seamless automation, and a design layer that stitches it all together with one invisible thread—consistency.

And no, consistency isn’t just about having the same blue buttons. It’s about behaviors. Tokens. Interactions. It’s about a feeling—when switching tools doesn’t break your flow.

It’s also about managing paradoxes, such as building for both the Cloud and the Data Center: different architectures, same experience. Divye’s team is solving this by designing modular, tokenized systems that adapt and scale without creating chaos.

Let that sink in.

India isn’t just participating!

Suppose you still think the Indian offices of tech multinationals are back-office sweatshops. In that case, you haven’t met the 60+ designers shaping the future of Atlassian’s most complex products—from Jira Service Management to AIOps.

And it’s not a sideshow.

Half of the design team for Jira Service Management is based in India. AI integrations? Design patterns for cognitive models? Yup, also being led here. The India team is tackling cloud migrations, intelligent UX, and AI-first experiences that most global firms are still writing whitepapers about.

Atlassian’s India design team isn’t shouting for attention. They’re building quietly, rigorously, and with intent. But here’s the kicker: in a few years, we’ll likely look back and realize this team wasn’t just designing for collaboration—they were creating the future of collaboration itself.

So while Silicon Valley is still busy chasing headlines, maybe it’s time to pay attention to what’s unfolding in Bengaluru.