Senior Software Engineer - Streaming Platform Client

Data streams are mission-critical at Datadog, powering near real-time communication across the vast majority of our services. Our Streaming Platform group builds the core infrastructure and abstractions that ensure Datadog remains a trusted partner for engineers worldwide. See our blog post.

The Streaming Platform Client team sits at the heart of this ecosystem. We own the Rust client library (producers and consumers) with language bindings for Java, Go, and Python. We focus on building intuitive APIs and abstractions that make a powerful distributed system easy to adopt and operate for the hundreds of internal users of our library.

Our library runs on critical data paths that handle hundreds of millions of messages per second making performance, observability, and reliability paramount. We also develop and operate the service that bridges the clients fleet with the platform's control plane, handling complex balancing, scaling, and static stability challenges.

We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer to help us evolve these features. You will collaborate directly with our users, tackle performance-critical code, and solve complex distributed systems challenges across the control plane, client libraries, and data plane.

At Datadog, we place value in our office culture - the relationships and collaboration it builds and the creativity it brings to the table. We operate as a hybrid workplace to ensure our Datadogs can create a work-life harmony that best fits them.

What You’ll Do:

Work within a distributed, high-impact team spanning Europe and the US, building critical technologies that power data pipelines for dozens of internal teams and hundreds of services.

Architect and implement resilient interactions between our client libraries and the control plane.
Optimize our high-throughput, low-level streaming library to push the boundaries of performance and efficiency.
Champion the developer experience by providing exceptional support, technical documentation, and proactive troubleshooting for our wide user base.
Lead high-stakes technical projects, maintaining end-to-end accountability for their delivery and quality.
Collaborate with partner teams on delivering projects wider than your team's scope.
Mentor junior engineers and interns, fostering a culture of technical excellence and shared knowledge.

Who You Are:

You are a self-starter who experiments methodically, iterates rapidly, and views failure as a learning opportunity.
You are a finisher who takes the projects through the finish line and does not stop at shipping code.
You thrive in collaborative environments, championing a blameless culture and actively fostering the growth of your teammates.
You communicate complex ideas effectively, with experience gathering requirements from stakeholders and leading high-impact technical initiatives.
You are deeply committed to user experience, ensuring the tools you build empower developers.
You have strong proficiency in low-level languages (ideally Rust).
You have a passion for deep-dive investigations, particularly in performance optimization and debugging complex systems.
You are curious about AI and actively leverage it to enhance your development workflow.
Bonus: Direct experience operating or using large-scale streaming systems like Kafka.
Bonus: Familiarity with language bindings and FFI.

Datadog values people from all walks of life. We understand not everyone will meet all the above qualifications on day one. That's okay. If you’re passionate about technology and want to grow your skills, we encourage you to apply.

Benefits and Growth:

New hire stock equity (RSUs) and employee stock purchase plan (ESPP)
Continuous professional development, product training, and career pathing
Intradepartmental mentor and buddy program for in-house networking
An inclusive company culture, ability to join our Community Guilds (Datadog employee resource groups)
Access to Inclusion Talks, our internal panel discussions
Free, global mental health benefits for employees and dependents age 6+
Competitive global benefits

Benefits and Growth listed above may vary based on the country of your employment and the nature of your employment with Datadog.

About Datadog:
Datadog (NASDAQ: DDOG) is a global SaaS business, delivering a rare combination of growth and profitability. We are on a mission to break down silos and solve complexity in the cloud age by enabling digital transformation, cloud migration, and infrastructure monitoring of our customers’ entire technology stacks. Built by engineers, for engineers, Datadog is used by organizations of all sizes across a wide range of industries. Together, we champion professional development, diversity of thought, innovation, and work excellence to empower continuous growth.

Join the pack and become part of a collaborative, pragmatic, and thoughtful people-first community where we solve tough problems, take smart risks, and celebrate one another. Learn more #DatadogLife on Instagram, LinkedIn and Datadog Learning Center.

Datadog offers a competitive salary and equity package, and may include variable compensation. Actual compensation is based on factors such as the candidate's skills, qualifications, and experience. In addition, Datadog offers a wide range of best in class, comprehensive and inclusive employee benefits for this role including healthcare, dental, parental planning, and mental health benefits, a 401(k) plan and match, paid time off, fitness reimbursements, and a discounted employee stock purchase plan.

The reasonably estimated yearly salary for this role at Datadog is:

$192,000—$240,000 USD

About Datadog:

Datadog is the leading observability and security platform for the AI era, providing businesses with unified visibility across the technology stack to manage complexity at scale. It brings applications, infrastructure, data, models, and security into one place, using AI to detect and resolve issues before they impact customers. Trusted globally by Fortune 500 companies and high-growth AI leaders, Datadog enables businesses to move faster with clarity and confidence. Learn more about #DatadogLife on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Datadog Learning Center.

Equal Opportunity at Datadog:

Datadog is proud to offer equal employment opportunity to everyone regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, veteran status, and other characteristics protected by law. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. Here are our Candidate Legal Notices for your reference.

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Any information you submit to Datadog as part of your application will be processed in accordance with Datadog’s Applicant and Candidate Privacy Notice. For information on our AI policy, please visit Interviewing at Datadog AI Guidelines.

Senior Software Engineer - Streaming Platform Client

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About the role