The shape of it

Seniority

Staff

Where

Hybrid

Requirements listed

6

Length

698 words

In the posting’s own words

Data Semantics is Datadog’s authority on semantic knowledge, providing shared infrastructure that powers both Datadog’s product experiences and AI capabilities. As Datadog continues its investment in OpenTelemetry-native observability, semantic interoperability, and AI-powered workflows, this team sits at the center of some of the company’s most strategic platform initiatives. As a Staff Engineer, you will serve as a technical leader for the team, balancing stewardship of critical production systems with the exploration of new platform capabilities that improve how telemetry is modeled, understood, and consumed across Datadog. You will work closely with engineering and product partners to define standards, drive technical direction, and deliver solutions that scale across Datadog’s observability platform.

What it asks for · 6

You have significant experience designing, operating, and scaling large-scale data infrastructure, distributed systems, or high-throughput data platforms.
You have demonstrated Staff-level impact through technical leadership, architectural ownership, cross-team influence, and mentorship.
You are a strong communicator who can drive alignment across engineering and product organizations without direct authority.
You bring a product-oriented mindset and can connect platform investments to customer outcomes and business impact.
You are comfortable operating in ambiguous problem spaces, balancing long-term platform strategy with pragmatic execution.
Experience with schema design, metadata systems, OpenTelemetry, observability platforms, knowledge graphs, or AI-assisted developer tooling is a plus.

What the job covers

Lead the technical direction of the Data Semantics team while remaining deeply hands-on in design, implementation, and delivery.
Build and scale semantic infrastructure that bridges OpenTelemetry, Datadog-native telemetry, cloud-provider telemetry, and customer-defined data models.
Drive platform initiatives focused on schema evolution, telemetry standardization, data insights, and semantic interoperability across Datadog products.
Partner with engineering and product teams across the platform to define standards, align stakeholders, and deliver high-leverage platform capabilities.
Mentor engineers through design reviews, technical guidance, operational excellence, and long-term career development.
Participate in on-call rotations and lead investigation and resolution efforts for complex production incidents affecting critical platform services.

Tools and skills named

Cloud & infra

Datadog9×
Observability3×
Distributed systems

Ways of working

Mentorship
On-call

Words the posting leans on

platform11×
data6×
semantic6×
product5×
technical5×
experience4×
telemetry4×
design3×
drive3×
engineering3×
infrastructure3×
observability3×
systems3×
authority2×
balancing2×
bring2×

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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