Datadog · 23 hours ago
Staff Applied Scientist - Observability Data Platform
Massachusetts, United States
Full-time
Hybrid
Lead/Staff
$234K/yr - $300K/yr
8+ years expDatadog is a global SaaS business focused on enabling digital transformation and cloud migration. They are seeking an experienced Staff Applied Scientist to design and prototype intelligent systems for AI-native observability, integrating advanced techniques to enhance observability infrastructure for self-improving systems.
AnalyticsCloud ComputingCloud Data ServicesCloud InfrastructureData ManagementDevOpsProductivity ToolsSaaS
Responsibilities
Design and prototype intelligent systems for AI-native observability, including cost-aware agent orchestration, adaptive query execution, and self-optimizing system components
Lead efforts to apply reinforcement learning, search, or hybrid approaches to infrastructure-level decision-making, such as autoscaling, scheduling, or load shaping
Collaborate with AI researchers and platform engineers to design experimentation loops and verifiers that guide LLM outputs using runtime metrics and formal models
Explore emerging paradigms like AI compilers, "programming after code," and runtime-aware prompt engineering to inform Datadog’s infrastructure and product design
Help define the direction of BitsEvolve - Datadog’s optimization agent that uses LLMs and evolutionary search to discover code improvements, optimize GPU kernels, and tune configurations to improve performance
Partner with product teams and platform stakeholders to ensure scientific advances translate into measurable improvements in cost, performance, and observability depth
Qualification
Required
You have a BS/MS/PhD in a scientific field or equivalent experience
You have 8+ years of experience in systems engineering, database internals, or infrastructure research, including hands-on experience in a production environment
You have a strong software engineering foundation, ideally in C++, Rust, Go, or Python, and are comfortable writing performant, maintainable code
You have deep expertise in at least one of the following areas: query optimization, data center scheduling, compiler design, reinforcement learning, or distributed systems design
You have experience applying search, planning, or learning techniques to solve real-world optimization problems
You are excited by systems that learn, adapt, and improve over time using feedback from runtime metrics and human-defined objectives
You are hypothesis-driven and enjoy designing experiments and evaluation loops, whether through simulations, benchmarks, or live systems
You thrive in ambiguity, enjoy reading papers and building prototypes, and want to help shape the future of infrastructure in the AI era
You enjoy collaborating across research, engineering, and product to bring scientific insights to practical outcomes
Benefits
Healthcare
Dental
Parental planning
Mental health benefits
A 401(k) plan and match
Paid time off
Fitness reimbursements
A discounted employee stock purchase plan
Company
Datadog
Datadog is an observability and security platform that offers infrastructure, applications, software development, and monitoring services.
1001-5000 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Datadog has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (123)
2024 (66)
2023 (45)
2022 (53)
2021 (31)
2020 (29)
Funding
Current Stage
Public CompanyTotal Funding
$1.02BKey Investors
ICONIQ GrowthIndex VenturesOpenView
2024-12-09Post Ipo Debt· $870M
2020-05-28Post Ipo Debt
2019-09-19IPO
Leadership Team
Olivier Pomel
Co-founder, CEO
Alexis Le-Quoc
Co-founder & CTO
Recent News
2026-01-23
2026-01-22
2026-01-22
Company data provided by crunchbase