Senior Staff Visual Designer, Design Lab

The shape of it

In the posting’s own words

Our design system powers everything we ship. Now we're ready to evolve it. As Datadog expands into AI-driven experiences and more complex product surfaces, the visual language needs to grow with it. This is the role that decides what that language is — someone with taste, judgment, and the confidence to set a direction and defend it.

What it asks for · 8

• You have 12+ years of experience in visual, brand, graphic and/or product design.
• You have strong taste and are comfortable defending a point of view on judgment alone.
• You can develop several different directions, synthesize the strongest ideas, and explain why one should move forward.
• Your craft is top-shelf and know how to create the thing in your head.
• You understand how typography, color, composition, imagery, iconography, and motion work together to create a coherent visual language.
• You can move a room, executives included, with a story and a compelling artifact.
• You're comfortable operating in ambiguity and defining direction where none exists.
• Your portfolio demonstrates exceptional visual craft and authorship, not just applied systems work.

What the job covers

• Define and evolve Datadog’s visual language across product surfaces.
• Lead exploratory and concept work, creating a range of distinct visual directions for the next generation of the product.
• Synthesize product context, research, references, and stakeholder input into clear visual principles and a coherent point of view.
• Establish the quality bar for typography, color, composition, iconography, imagery, motion, and visual expression across the platform.
• Create high-fidelity product exemplars and prototypes that make an emerging direction tangible.
• Partner deeply with Brand, Product Design, Motion, and Design Systems to test and refine the direction across different surfaces.
• Influence executives and senior stakeholders through clear, persuasive visual storytelling.
• Guide and critique the work of other designers, helping the visual direction remain coherent as it evolves.
• Help shape how visual exploration, critique, and craft are integrated into Datadog’s design process.

Tools and skills named

Words the posting leans on

• visual24×
• product15×
• direction14×
• design11×
• craft7×
• create7×
• coherent6×
• motion6×
• surfaces6×
• brand5×
• evolve5×
• systems5×
• visual language5×
• clear4×
• color composition4×
• comfortable4×

Counted from the posting after the mission statement and the legal notices are set aside. The ones near the top are the ones a screener is looking for.

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