Datadog For Startups Founding Engineering Lead in United States

The Datadog for Startups (DDFS) program helps the next generation of fast-scaling companies adopt best-in-class observability and security from day one. We're looking for the technical engine of this program - someone who can sit across from a startup CTO, earn credibility in the first five minutes, and help them see how Datadog fits into their stack before they've even finished describing it. You'll be the first technical member on a lean, five-person team, owning the technical motion end-to-end: discovery calls, demos, startup enablement, forward-deployed engineering projects, and representing Datadog at founder events across San Francisco. This isn't a traditional SE seat - it's part solutions architect, part technical consultant, part startup evangelist, and it requires someone adaptable, proactive, and ready to take initiative without being told what to do next. At Datadog, we place value in our office culture - the relationships and collaboration it builds, and the creativity it brings to the table. We operate as a hybrid workplace to ensure our Datadogs can create a work-life harmony that best fits them. What You'll Do: Run discovery calls with startup CTOs and engineering leads to identify quick wins, validate technical needs, and position Datadog against alternatives like Grafana, New Relic, Sentry, and Clickhouse Deliver tailored Datadog demos and help startups get instrumented quickly - removing friction, showcasing value, and ensuring smooth technical onboarding, particularly around AI/ML observability, infrastructure scaling, and security Build automation to improve internal team workflows - EX: outreach, reporting, the application process, and website updates Represent Datadog for Startups at accelerator demo days, hackathons, conferences, founder dinners, and workshops across San Francisco Build relationships across SF's startup ecosystem - founders, VCs, accelerator partners, and technical communities - and develop thought leadership content for tech

Datadog's Forward Deployed Engineering function is in an active growth phase, and the FDE Lead will play a central role in shaping what comes next. Working in close partnership with the Head of Datadog for Startups and Forward Deployed Engineers, and the existing FDE team, you will help define and expand the FDE framework, build out the structures and processes that allow the team to operate at scale, and extend the program's reach well beyond any single customer segment. This role sits at the rare intersection of sales, execution, program design, and hands-on engineering leadership. You are part field technical leader, part program architect, and part cross-functional connector. You will help determine what the FDE motion looks like at Datadog, contribute to its playbook, and push the boundaries of what the team can deliver. At Datadog, we place value in our office culture - the relationships and collaboration it builds, and the creativity it brings to the table. We operate as a hybrid workplace to ensure our Datadogs can create a work-life harmony that best fits them. What You’ll Do: Evolve and scale the FDE operating model end to end: engagement intake, scoping, sprint delivery, handoff back to account teams, and the success metrics (time-to-value, adoption lift, ARR influence, NPS) and reporting infrastructure that support them. Build out a catalog of FDE offerings spanning observability quickstarts, custom integration development, LLM/AI observability accelerators, CI/CD pipeline instrumentation, and cost optimization deep dives, and contribute to their pricing and business models, including free-to-paid conversion plays, paid deployment packages, and post-deployment success motions. Capture product and feature gaps uncovered during deployments, translate them into structured prioritized briefs, and partner with PM and Engineering to strengthen the field-feedback channel that informs roadmap decisions on a regular cadence. Hire, onboard, an

We are looking for a talented engineer to lead evaluation of startup acquisition opportunities in the AI, cloud and security space. You will drive product evaluations, prepare and manage technical architecture discussions with target groups in Product and Engineering and provide roadmap suggestions for M&A and investments for Datadog. You will be a key partner to Datadog’s C-level leadership and highly visible at the most senior levels of Datadog. The role is reporting into the Senior Director of Product Strategy and falls within the Product organization. We are looking for an innovative and strategic thinker who is passionate about the latest tech being developed by startups in the cloud, AI and security space. The ideal candidate enjoys researching and evaluating new technologies, works effectively with cross-functional teams, and communicates opinions concisely to our leadership team. Broad understanding of relevant Cloud Technologies and deep understanding of the full coverage of Datadogs current offerings is necessary. The Corporate Development team is small and values authentic, strong-willed individuals who think creatively and proactively. This role leads technical due diligence from a product and architecture perspective across our acquisition pipeline. You'll scope and stand up proof-of-concept and sandbox environments to stress-test candidate products, then give an honest, unvarnished view of their quality and depth - the kind of assessment that holds up regardless of deal momentum. You'll assess technical architecture, flag the risks and open questions that matter most early, and turn that into a clear post-acquisition integration path. Working closely with engineering, you'll keep the evaluation focused on what's actually decision-relevant, then translate the findings into strategic recommendations for leadership and help carry the integration through by partnering with the right people on the other side. What You’l

We are looking for a talented engineer to lead evaluation of startup acquisition opportunities in the AI, cloud and security space. You will drive product evaluations, prepare and manage technical architecture discussions with target groups in Product and Engineering and provide roadmap suggestions for M&A and investments for Datadog. You will be a key partner to Datadog’s C-level leadership and highly visible at the most senior levels of Datadog. The role is reporting into the Senior Director of Product Strategy and falls within the Product organization. We are looking for an innovative and strategic thinker who is passionate about the latest tech being developed by startups in the cloud, AI and security space. The ideal candidate enjoys researching and evaluating new technologies, works effectively with cross-functional teams, and communicates opinions concisely to our leadership team. Broad understanding of relevant Cloud Technologies and deep understanding of the full coverage of Datadogs current offerings is necessary. The Corporate Development team is small and values authentic, strong-willed individuals who think creatively and proactively. This role leads technical due diligence from a product and architecture perspective across our acquisition pipeline. You'll scope and stand up proof-of-concept and sandbox environments to stress-test candidate products, then give an honest, unvarnished view of their quality and depth - the kind of assessment that holds up regardless of deal momentum. You'll assess technical architecture, flag the risks and open questions that matter most early, and turn that into a clear post-acquisition integration path. Working closely with engineering, you'll keep the evaluation focused on what's actually decision-relevant, then translate the findings into strategic recommendations for leadership and help carry the integration through by partnering with the right people on the other side. What You’l

Datadog is seeking a highly motivated Senior Corporate Development Lead to drive our AI product strategy, build strong relationships across the founder and VC ecosystem, and support high-impact initiatives including acquisitions, venture investments, and startup partnerships. You will be part of a small, high-visibility team that reports directly to Datadog's Founder/CEO. The ideal candidate is passionate about AI and developer tools, comfortable rolling up their sleeves, and excited to operate in a fluid, technically demanding environment. You will support evaluations, source promising AI startups, collaborate closely with internal product and engineering leaders, and help position Datadog as the preferred partner for the next generation of founders. This role is ideal for someone who is hungry for increased responsibility, operates with authenticity and creativity, and prioritizes the company's interests. At Datadog, we place value in our office culture - the relationships and collaboration it builds, and the creativity it brings to the table. We operate as a hybrid workplace to ensure our Datadogs can create a work-life harmony that best fits them. What You'll Do: Support Datadog's AI product strategy by analyzing emerging technologies, market opportunities, and competitive dynamics. Source high-potential AI startups for acquisition, investment, or partnership, and build a strong presence across the founder and VC ecosystem through meetups, conferences, and events. Drive workstreams across diligence, valuation, financial modeling, strategic assessment, and internal recommendations. Partner with Product and Engineering leaders to evaluate build/buy/partner opportunities aligned with Datadog's AI roadmap. Support negotiation processes, including term sheets and partnership structures, and collaborate on integration planning with cross-functional partners after deals close. Help attract early-stage AI companies into Datadog's startup program. Wh

Datadog is seeking a highly motivated Senior Corporate Development Lead to drive our AI product strategy, build strong relationships across the founder and VC ecosystem, and support high-impact initiatives including acquisitions, venture investments, and startup partnerships. You will be part of a small, high-visibility team that reports directly to Datadog’s Founder/CEO. The ideal candidate is passionate about AI and developer tools, comfortable rolling up their sleeves, and excited to operate in a fluid, technically demanding environment. You will support evaluations, source promising AI startups, collaborate closely with internal product and engineering leaders, and help position Datadog as the preferred partner for the next generation of founders. This role is ideal for someone who is hungry for increased responsibility, operates with authenticity and creativity, and prioritizes the company’s interests. At Datadog, we place value in our office culture - the relationships and collaboration it builds, and the creativity it brings to the table. We operate as a hybrid workplace to ensure our Datadogs can create a work-life harmony that best fits them. What You’ll Do: Support Datadog’s AI product strategy by analyzing emerging technologies, market opportunities, and competitive dynamics. Source high-potential AI startups for acquisition, investment, or partnership, and build a strong presence across the founder and VC ecosystem. Attend meetups, conferences, and ecosystem events to expand Datadog’s visibility and pipeline opportunities. Drive workstreams across diligence, valuation, financial modeling, strategic assessment, and internal recommendations. Partner with Product and Engineering leaders to evaluate build/buy/partner opportunities aligned with Datadog’s AI roadmap. Support negotiation processes, including term sheets and partnership structures. Collaborate on integration planning with cross-functional partners after acquisitions or strategic de

Today, everyone from PMs to Sales to SREs uses AI to query their business data - but every answer is a one-off with no governance, no consistency, and no visibility for data teams. We're building the system that fixes this: a context layer that learns from existing data tools driving high quality and consistent answers, an AI-powered query experience, full governance for data teams, and rich analysis surfaces to present and share the results. You'd be building a zero to one product of what we believe will become a major new product line for Datadog. At Datadog, we place value in our office culture - the relationships and collaboration it builds, and the creativity it brings to the table. We operate as a hybrid workplace to ensure our Datadogs can create a work-life harmony that best fits them. What you'll do Drive the product vision and roadmap spanning the Data agent experience, the semantic/context layer, governance console, chat experience and analysis surfaces (dashboards, notebooks, sheets) Own the end-to-end product lifecycle from discovery to launch, working with a cross-functional team of engineers, designers and other PMs Deeply understand the needs of two key personas: data teams (who govern and curate) and data consumers (PMs, engineers, SREs, executives who ask questions) Design the context and governance layer that makes AI-powered analytics trustworthy - including auto-generation from existing BI tools, eval frameworks, confidence scoring, and self-improvement loops Define how observability data and business data come together to serve unique use cases Engage directly with early customers and internal dogfooding users to iterate on accuracy, usability, and trust Independently research the competitive landscape across legacy BI vendors, warehouse-native analytics, AI-first startups, and AI labs Work on the product pricing Work with GTM teams to define positioning, packaging, and the path to displacing entrenched tools Who you are 5+ years of experience

As Datadog’s in-house product experts, the Technical Escalation Engineering (TEE) team plays a critical role in driving our global success. We enable our customers, from the world’s most innovative startups to the largest enterprises. Through deep technical expertise, relentless problem-solving, and exceptional customer engagement, we educate, guide, and troubleshoot, delivering high-impact solutions that shape the customer experience. Whether through hands-on technical call, in-depth fact findings meeting, or complex investigations, we set the gold standard for technical excellence and customer advocacy. As part of our TEE team, you’ll tackle the most challenging technical problems, collaborate directly with Engineering and Product to refine and evolve our platform, and mentor teams worldwide, elevating the technical bar at every level. As part of the Technical Escalation Engineering (TEE) team, you’ll operate at the heart of Datadog’s ecosystem, working at the intersection of Technical Solutions, Engineering, Product, and our Customers. Every challenge you take on will directly impact the performance, scalability, and success of both our clients and our platform. You’ll be in an environment that moves fast, challenges you daily, and rewards curiosity, ownership, and technical excellence. This is your chance to shape the future of observability and security, driving innovation, mentoring teams, and influencing product direction while witnessing your expertise make an immediate and lasting impact. At Datadog, we place value in our office culture - the relationships and collaboration it builds and the creativity it brings to the table. We operate as a hybrid workplace to ensure our Datadogs can create a work-life harmony that best fits them. What You’ll Do: Become the expert on usage metering, revenue-impacting behavior, and Cloud Cost Management within Technical Solutions, helping customers optimize usage and control spend across all Datado

The Team As Datadog’s in-house product experts, the Technical Escalation Engineering (TEE) team plays a critical role in driving our global success. We enable our customers, from the world’s most innovative startups to the largest enterprises. Through deep technical expertise, relentless problem-solving, and exceptional customer engagement, we educate, guide, and troubleshoot, delivering high-impact solutions that shape the customer experience. Whether through hands-on technical call, in-depth fact findings meeting, or complex investigations, we set the gold standard for technical excellence and customer advocacy. As part of our TEE team, you’ll tackle the most challenging technical problems, collaborate directly with Engineering and Product to refine and evolve our platform, and mentor teams worldwide, elevating the technical bar at every level. Role Summary As part of the Technical Escalation Engineering (TEE) team, you’ll operate at the heart of Datadog’s ecosystem, working at the intersection of Technical Solutions, Engineering, Product, and our Customers. Every challenge you take on will directly impact the performance, scalability, and success of both our clients and our platform. You’ll be in an environment that moves fast, challenges you daily, and rewards curiosity, ownership, and technical excellence. This is your chance to shape the future of observability and security, driving innovation, mentoring teams, and influencing product direction while witnessing your expertise make an immediate and lasting impact. At Datadog, we place value in our office culture - the relationships and collaboration it builds and the creativity it brings to the table. We operate as a hybrid workplace to ensure our Datadogs can create a work-life harmony that best fits them. What You’ll Do: Develop deep technical expertise and continuously learn as the product evolves. Investigate complex escalations, lead high-stakes technical calls, and drive solutions for

As Datadog’s in-house product experts, the Technical Escalation Engineering (TEE) team plays a critical role in driving our global success. We enable our customers, from the world’s most innovative startups to the largest enterprises. Through deep technical expertise, relentless problem-solving, and exceptional customer engagement, we educate, guide, and troubleshoot, delivering high-impact solutions that shape the customer experience. Whether through hands-on technical call, in-depth fact findings meeting, or complex investigations, we set the gold standard for technical excellence and customer advocacy. As part of our TEE team, you’ll tackle the most challenging technical problems, collaborate directly with Engineering and Product to refine and evolve our platform, and mentor teams worldwide, elevating the technical bar at every level. As part of the Technical Escalation Engineering (TEE) team, you’ll operate at the heart of Datadog’s ecosystem, working at the intersection of Technical Solutions, Engineering, Product, and our Customers. Every challenge you take on will directly impact the performance, scalability, and success of both our clients and our platform. You’ll be in an environment that moves fast, challenges you daily, and rewards curiosity, ownership, and technical excellence. This is your chance to shape the future of observability and security, driving innovation, mentoring teams, and influencing product direction while witnessing your expertise make an immediate and lasting impact. At Datadog, we place value in our office culture - the relationships and collaboration it builds and the creativity it brings to the table. We operate as a hybrid workplace to ensure our Datadogs can create a work-life harmony that best fits them. What You’ll Do: Develop deep technical expertise and continuously learn as the product evolves. Investigate complex escalations, lead high-stakes technical calls, and drive solutions for our most critical customer cha

The Team As Datadog’s in-house product experts, the Technical Escalation Engineering (TEE) team plays a critical role in driving our global success. We enable our customers, from the world’s most innovative startups to the largest enterprises. Through deep technical expertise, relentless problem-solving, and exceptional customer engagement, we educate, guide, and troubleshoot, delivering high-impact solutions that shape the customer experience. Whether through hands-on technical call, in-depth fact findings meeting, or complex investigations, we set the gold standard for technical excellence and customer advocacy. As part of our TEE team, you’ll tackle the most challenging technical problems, collaborate directly with Engineering and Product to refine and evolve our platform, and mentor teams worldwide, elevating the technical bar at every level. Role Summary As part of the Technical Escalation Engineering (TEE) team, you’ll operate at the heart of Datadog’s ecosystem, working at the intersection of Technical Solutions, Engineering, Product, and our Customers. Every challenge you take on will directly impact the performance, scalability, and success of both our clients and our platform. You’ll be in an environment that moves fast, challenges you daily, and rewards curiosity, ownership, and technical excellence. This is your chance to shape the future of observability and security, driving innovation, mentoring teams, and influencing product direction while witnessing your expertise make an immediate and lasting impact. At Datadog, we place value in our office culture - the relationships and collaboration it builds and the creativity it brings to the table. We operate as a hybrid workplace to ensure our Datadogs can create a work-life harmony that best fits them. What You’ll Do: Develop deep technical expertise and continuously learn as the product evolves. Investigate complex escalations, lead high-stakes technical calls, and drive solutio

We are the Experimentation team at Datadog, a startup operating inside one of the fastest-growing companies in software. The team brings together engineers who joined through Datadog’s May 2025 acquisition of Eppo with engineers from across Datadog, and together we are building feature flagging and experimentation into the platform. Both products were recently launched this year, and we are just getting started: we are migrating customers from Eppo onto Datadog while shipping an ambitious roadmap across both flagging and experimentation. Our statistics engineers hold PhDs and are pushing the boundaries of what an experimentation platform can do. Our full-stack engineers move fast, lean on the latest AI tooling, and prototype and ship new features weekly. We talk to customers directly to shape requirements, and our roadmap is driven by our own product vision and sharpened by real customer and sales input. We are looking for an Engineering Manager to lead the team building the Experimentation App. You will own one to two squads to start, partnering closely with our engineers, statisticians, product managers, and designers to turn a deep roadmap into a shipped product. To conform to US export control regulations, candidates should be eligible for any required authorizations from the US government. What You’ll Do: Lead, mentor, and grow a team of strong full-stack and frontend engineers. Help them grow to the next level and continuously provide them opportunities to develop. Own delivery for the Experimentation App from planning through production, balancing speed with quality in a fast-paced environment. Set technical direction in partnership with your team and our statistics engineers, engaging credibly on architecture and tradeoffs. Partner with Product, Design, and customers directly to shape requirements and turn customer and sales input into roadmap. Foster a culture of fast iteration and high engineering standards through code reviews, design reviews, and blamele

About Datadog: We're on a mission to build the best platform in the world for engineers to understand and scale their systems, applications, and teams. We operate at high scale—trillions of data points per day—providing always-on alerting, metrics visualization, logs, and application tracing for tens of thousands of companies. Our engineering culture values pragmatism, honesty, and simplicity to solve hard problems the right way. You will: Solve a scaling bottleneck in a critical service Deploy a new feature to production, progressively rolling it out with feature flags Investigate and fix a production issue from a service your team owns Design a way to scale up a service for more traffic With your team, plan the most important projects to work on next Who You Are: You have significant experience in one or more languages You value code simplicity and performance You can design architecture to solve problems at high scale You have a BS/MS/PhD in a scientific field or equivalent experience You want to work in a fast, high-growth startup environment that respects its engineers and customers You have demonstrated ability to use AI coding tools in day-to-day workflows and build, validate, and refine AI-generated output in products You can design AI Backend systems, with awareness of quality, cost, and latency tradeoffs 6+ years of experience Bonus points: You've worked at high scale with systems like Redis, Cassandra, Kafka You wrote your own data pipelines once or twice before You have a strong background in statistics You have significant experience with Go, C, or Python You’re excited about leveraging AI tools to enhance how you code, solve problems, and build – or eager to learn how You’re motivated to push the boundaries of how AI can improve software engineering best practices and contribute to building AI-enabled products Datadog values people from all walks of life. We understand not everyone will meet all the above qualificat

Distributed Systems engineers at Datadog design, implement and run in production the foundational platforms powering our applications. Your data pipelines will ingest, store, analyze and query in real-time billions of events per second from companies all over the globe. The platforms are optimized for durability, high availability, low latency, internet-scale footprint and operability. At Datadog, we place value in our office culture - the relationships that it builds, the creativity it brings to the table, and the collaboration of being together. We operate as a hybrid workplace to ensure our employees can create a work-life harmony that best fits them. What You’ll Do: Build fault-tolerant, horizontally scalable solutions running in multi-tenant environments Write in Go, Java Rust or C++, amongst other languages Use Kafka, Redis, Cassandra, Elasticsearch and other open-source components Own meaningful parts of our service, have an impact, grow with the company Who You Are: 6+ years of experience You have a BS/MS/PhD in a scientific field or equivalent experience You have significant backend programming experience in one or more languages (Go, Java, Rust, C++) You have been exposed to working on problems (high durability / low latency /…) You can get down to the low-level when needed You care about simple designs and performance You want to work in a fast, high-growth startup environment that respects its engineers and customers You have demonstrated ability to use AI coding tools in day-to-day workflows and validate, critique, and refine AI-generated output. Bonus: you’re motivated to push the boundaries of how AI can improve software engineering best practices and contribute to building AI-enabled products. This job is available in various departments within our company; to conform to US export control regulations, some of these roles may require candidates to be eligible for any required authorizations from the US government. Datadog values peo

We are a team of engineers that translate our real-world experience to help our user communities solve problems. With a focus on AI-accelerated workflows and next-generation developer ecosystems, you will have the opportunity to meet fast-moving teams where they are, helping them lay strong engineering foundations and broadening your impact to the developer community at large. This is a unique opportunity to use both your engineering depth and authentic storytelling skills to shape how the next wave of builders approach software health, scalability, and observability. What You’ll Do: Help developers hone their craft in an AI-accelerated world by exploring how AI coding assistants and rapid-prototyping tools change software workflows, and guiding teams on how to balance rapid prototyping with established engineering practices around performance, code health, and system reliability. Build in public by creating authentic, peer-to-peer technical content, sharing your engineering insights directly where modern developers collaborate in person and online. Drive a constructive, bidirectional feedback loop between fast-moving developer communities and our internal teams, translating real-world developer experiences into actionable product insights to shape our roadmap while advocating for user needs from the inside. Design and ship high-quality open-source boilerplate templates, quickstarts, and tools that make integrating observability seamless across AI native workflows, next-gen platforms (Vercel, Supabase, etc.), and cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure). Who You Are: A builder with approximately 10+ years of software engineering experience, ideally having shipped applications from scratch or worked within an early-stage startup environment where you've worn multiple hats. An AI-fluent developer who natively leverages AI coding assistants and rapid-prototyping tools as a core part of your regular, day-to-day development workflow. Multi-stack familiar, comfortable writing an