Staff Engineer - Data Semantics

Requirements:

• 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 You'll Be Doing:

• 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.

Perks and Benefits:

• Generous and competitive benefits package
• New hire stock equity (RSUs) and employee stock purchase plan
• Continuous career development and pathing opportunities
• Employee-focused best in class onboarding
• Internal mentor and cross-departmental buddy program
• Friendly and inclusive workplace culture