Senior Staff Software Engineer

Responsibilities

• Act as the technical owner for multiple critical systems or architecture areas spanning several teams or product lines.
• Drive the design and delivery of high-scale, high-impact projects from initial vision to production execution.
• Build consensus and alignment across stakeholders on long-term technical strategy and key architectural decisions.
• Investigate and optimize performance, reliability, and efficiency within large-scale distributed systems.
• Collaborate with Staff Engineers, Directors, and VPs to shape the company's technical roadmap.
• Mentor engineers and influence engineering culture through design reviews, technical talks, and working groups.

Requirements

• BS/MS/PhD in a scientific field or equivalent practical experience.
• 10+ years of experience in backend, infrastructure, or distributed systems engineering.
• 4+ years of experience leading complex technical initiatives and cross-team projects.
• Deep expertise in core systems domains such as distributed storage, event streaming, networking, or data infrastructure.
• Proven ability to navigate ambiguous problem spaces and deliver highly reliable, deeply technical systems.
• Exceptional communication skills with the ability to align diverse stakeholders.
• Demonstrated ability to use AI coding tools in day-to-day workflows to validate and refine output.

Preferred Qualifications

• Motivation to push the boundaries of how AI can improve software engineering best practices.
• Experience contributing to the development of AI-enabled products.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and equity package.
• Comprehensive healthcare, dental, parental planning, and mental health benefits.
• 401(k) plan with company match.
• Paid time off and fitness reimbursements.
• Discounted employee stock purchase plan.
• Continuous professional development opportunities.

About the Company

Datadog is the leading observability and security platform for the AI era, providing businesses with unified visibility across the technology stack to manage complexity at scale. We operate at high scale—trillions of data points per day—helping tens of thousands of companies monitor their applications, infrastructure, and security in real-time.