Staff Software Engineer – Security Agent

About the role

This role is part of Datadog’s Security Agent team, which powers critical security capabilities across Workload Protection, Vulnerability Management, Cloud Security, and emerging offerings. As a Staff Software Engineer you will lead the design and development of low‑level Linux instrumentation and runtime security technologies that help customers detect threats, monitor system activity, and protect cloud‑native workloads at scale.

Key responsibilities

• Lead architecture and development of security agent capabilities for runtime threat detection and workload protection.
• Design and build reusable eBPF‑based monitoring for process, file, and network visibility in Linux environments.
• Drive end‑to‑end delivery of new features from strategy and design through implementation, testing, and rollout.
• Establish and evolve testing methodologies to improve platform coverage, detection quality, reliability, and performance.
• Partner with product, security, infrastructure, and engineering teams to deliver shared platform capabilities across multiple Datadog products.

Required profile

• Significant experience building software in Linux environments, with deep knowledge of Linux internals, kernel APIs, or systems programming.
• Hands‑on experience with eBPF, kernel‑level instrumentation, driver development, networking systems, or agent development.
• Proven track record of building and operating performance‑sensitive, reliable systems in production.
• Experience maintaining production software across diverse Linux distributions and kernel versions.
• Product‑mindset and customer focus, balancing technical excellence with impact and usability.

Required skills

• Linux operating system and kernel internals
• eBPF programming
• Kernel‑level instrumentation and driver development
• Networking systems and agent development
• Systems programming and performance optimization
• Reliability engineering for production workloads