Lead Designer

The shape of it

In the posting’s own words

This is a hands-on craft role first. You'll bring deep expertise in design, brand identity, visual language, and systems thinking, paired with strategic thinking, business-problem-solving approach. You're as comfortable concepting a bold campaign idea as you are building the design system that makes it repeatable. You move with ease across mediums and you bring a team-oriented, can-do attitude to whatever the work requires. You bring hands-on experience using AI-assisted workflows to elevate how we design, build, and scale our brand. You'll combine exceptional brand craft with a passion for building enduring systems, enabling teams across the organization to create with confidence through thoughtful tools, documentation, and design leadership.

What it asks for · 8

• You have 8+ years of experience in graphic design and brand development, with a portfolio rooted in visual identity and brand craft.
• Strong visual design foundation, including typography, layout, color, and hierarchy.
• Deep, hands-on Figma expertise: component architecture, style and variable systems, and documentation that other designers will use.
• Built a large-scale brand system or Figma library from scratch — not just maintained or contributed to an existing one.
• Experience mentoring or enabling other designers to work confidently within a system you've built.
• You have strong taste and are comfortable defending a point of view to stakeholders at all levels. You know how to translate brand strategy into scalable, well-governed design systems.
• Comfortable working in fast-paced environments with evolving priorities and ambiguity.
• You leverage AI tools daily in the way you work — such as for research, ideation, prototyping, scaling design processes, production, and output with precision

What the job covers

• Lead the evolution of Datadog’s visual identity and establish the quality bar for brand expression across every touchpoint.
• Build the brand systems, templates, asset libraries, and guidelines that allow teams across Datadog to create high-quality work quickly.
• Design, build, and steward a scalable, Figma-native brand system—including component libraries, variables, documentation, and governance—that enables consistency across a growing creative organization.
• Partner closely with Brand, Creative Operations, Product, Marketing, Sales, and other cross-functional teams to deliver cohesive, high-impact creative experiences.
• Enable and influence designers by creating tools, documentation, and workflows that help teams confidently extend and evolve the brand system.
• Present design concepts and rationale to stakeholders, influencing decisions through thoughtful visual storytelling and strong creative judgment.
• Help define how Datadog’s brand design practice evolves as the company grows, balancing creative exploration with scalable systems and operational excellence.
• Bring hands-on experience using AI-assisted workflows to build scalable brand systems, applying that expertise, and can enable teams across Datadog to use them effectively too.

Tools and skills named

Words the posting leans on

• brand17×
• systems13×
• design11×
• build6×
• experience6×
• bring5×
• creative5×
• designers5×
• visual5×
• craft4×
• create4×
• documentation4×
• enable4×
• hands-on4×
• scalable4×
• brand system3×

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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