Staff Engineer, Compute

About the role

As a Staff Engineer on Datadog's Compute – Disruption and Workload Placement team, you will define how the Kubernetes fleet scales to meet rapidly growing AI and cloud‑native workloads, ensuring the right compute capacity is available in the right region at the right time across AWS, Google Cloud and Azure.

Key responsibilities

• Lead the technical direction of capacity management and workload placement for Datadog's Kubernetes platform spanning 100,000+ virtual machines across multiple cloud providers.
• Design and build systems that optimize how engineering workloads are scheduled and deployed across regions while balancing capacity constraints, reliability, and performance.
• Partner with infrastructure teams to evolve multi‑region and multi‑cloud capacity orchestration as Datadog continues to scale.
• Develop production software in Go to improve Kubernetes platform capabilities, automation, and operational efficiency.
• Use data and capacity signals to influence infrastructure decisions, forecast growth, and improve workload placement strategies.

Required profile

• Significant experience designing and operating large‑scale Kubernetes‑based infrastructure or platform systems.
• Strong programming skills, ideally in Go or a comparable systems programming language.
• Hands‑on experience with at least one major cloud provider (AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure) and understanding of distributed cloud infrastructure.
• Systems mindset with a passion for solving complex infrastructure, scheduling, or capacity management challenges.
• Comfortable working with operational data, capacity forecasting, or analytical approaches that inform engineering decisions.
• Proven track record of providing technical leadership across teams and influencing architecture without direct management authority.

What we offer

• 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.