Dive Brief:

• Atlassian CFO Joe Binz will retire from his role effective June 30, 2026, the project management software provider announced Thursday. The transition is not the result of any disagreement with the company, Atlassian said in a securities filing.
• “We have mutually decided that the time is right for a thoughtful transition, and we have initiated a search for our next Chief Financial Officer,” the San Francisco-based company said of the switch, which was reported alongside its fiscal 2026 Q1 earnings. “We are grateful for Joe’s nearly four years at Atlassian, where he shepherded Atlassian through a transformational period from Server to Cloud, helped scale our enterprise business, and built a world-class finance organization.”
• Also Thursday, Atlassian appointed Google and Slack alum Tamar Yehoshua as its chief product and AI officer in a move effective Nov. 17.

Dive Insight:

A veteran of software companies including Intel and Microsoft, Binz has served as Atlassian’s CFO since September 2022, according to his LinkedIn profile. His focus at the moment is on ensuring a smooth transition, he said during the company’s Q1 26 earnings call according to a transcript.

“I've got a lot of big life events coming up, and I really want to be fully present for those,” he said of the decision to depart. “And from a work perspective, I feel like the finance team is in good shape. I'm a big believer in new energy and new ideas and those being a good thing, and I think that applies to me as it applies to just about anybody else.”

Binz’s departure comes as the company has made a number of changes to its board and C-suite. Over the course of its fiscal 2025, Atlassian appointed a new chief revenue officer and announced its current president, Anu Bharadwaj, would be stepping down from her role effective Dec. 31, according to its most recent proxy statement filed Oct.15.   

For the fiscal year 2025 Binz, 58, received approximately $14.1 million in total compensation, including $568,750 in base salary and approximately $13.2 million in stock awards, according to the proxy.

The planned CFO transition is also occurring as the project management software provider continues to bet big on AI. Among other moves aimed at expanding its AI offerings, Atlassian recently announced it had completed its acquisition of the Browser Company — a productivity software provider the company purchased for approximately $610 million in cash, according to a Sept. 4 press release.

“Together, the companies intend to reimagine the browser for knowledge work in the AI era,” Atlassian said in an Oct. 21 press release, noting the “explosion of SaaS apps, coupled with the rise in AI, demands a browser built for modern work.

The company has also laid off about 350 customer service employees in recent months, noting improvements to their platform and tools — largely related to AI — had reduced the need for staff, CFO Dive sister publication CX Dive previously reported.

Atlassian co-founder and CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes also credited much of the company’s Q1 of fiscal 2026 results to its “relentless pace of AI innovation,” noting its AI tools now have more than 3.5 million monthly active users — a 50% jump quarter-over-quarter, he said in a statement included in the Thursday earnings release.

AI is “directly driving demand” for its cloud offerings, Atlassian said in its shareholder letter, with cloud revenue for the quarter increasing by 26% to $998 million. The project management software provider saw “significantly stronger-than-expected cloud migrations from data centers, which is a great thing for our business,” Binz said during the earnings call. “As you know, this has been a big area of investment for us. It's a key strategic priority.”