Staff Engineer - Data Semantics

Data Semantics is Datadog’s authority on semantic knowledge, providing shared infrastructure that powers both Datadog’s product experiences and AI capabilities. As Datadog continues its investment in OpenTelemetry-native observability, semantic interoperability, and AI-powered workflows, this team sits at the center of some of the company’s most strategic platform initiatives. As a Staff Engineer, you will serve as a technical leader for the team, balancing stewardship of critical production systems with the exploration of new platform capabilities that improve how telemetry is modeled, understood, and consumed across Datadog. You will work closely with engineering and product partners to define standards, drive technical direction, and deliver solutions that scale across Datadog’s observability platform. 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: 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. Who You Are: 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. Datadog values people from all walks of life. We know 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 experience, we encourage you to apply. Benefits and Growth: 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 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 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 Cent…