Opportunity

Senior Engineer - Data Platform at Datadog | Career Growth in Columbus

Location Columbus
Company Datadog
Source jobicy
Posted 2026-08-06 07:10:03

Career & Market Insight

This is a high-leverage senior IC role at one of the most technically demanding infrastructure platforms in the observability industry. REDAPL ingesting 4.5M updates/second places this squarely in the top tier of distributed systems engineering challenges globally.

Skills you'll build or deepen:

  • Query engine design and graph traversal at scale — a rare, highly marketable specialization
  • Distributed data systems (Kafka-scale ingestion, Apache Iceberg, graph databases)
  • Platform engineering leadership and cross-team technical influence
  • Reliability engineering at Fortune 500 scale

Market positioning: Senior backend engineers with distributed systems expertise command €100k–€160k+ in Western Europe. Graph database and query engine experience (Trino, Calcite, DataFusion) is niche and increasingly in demand as AI data pipelines grow — this role builds a differentiating skillset.

Green flags:

  • Datadog is a publicly traded company (DDOG) with strong revenue growth — not a risky startup
  • Real ownership: the posting explicitly mentions influence on product direction and roadmap input
  • Open-source pedigree valued (PMC membership, Trino/Calcite contributions)
  • Inclusive hiring stance — encourages applicants who don't meet every requirement

Watch for: The hybrid mandate means this is not a fully remote role. If you're seeking 100% remote flexibility long-term, clarify office expectations during interviews. Also note that compensation is not disclosed — benchmark carefully against Datadog's Levels.fyi data before negotiating.

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to help us take REDAPL, our Referential Data Platform, to the next level. REDAPL is Datadog's main platform for tracking our customers' infrastructure resources and relationships. The platform enables products where customers can understand, keep track of, and gain insights into their infrastructure related to performance, cost, security, and more.

Many Datadog products use REDAPL today — such as Cloud Security Posture Management, Resource Catalog, Cloud Cost Management, and Service Catalog — and REDAPL ingests more than 4.5 million updates/second.

As a Senior Engineer, you will drive, lead, and collaborate on projects both inside and outside the platform. You can expect to contribute to key technical decisions relating to our data ingestion, processing, and query pipelines.

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:

  • Build a query engine that supports efficient relationship traversals for our most demanding workloads.
  • Contribute to design and drive high-priority, high-visibility projects to increase the platform's value, resilience, and scalability across multiple teams.
  • Lead and guide other engineers through architectural platform decisions.
  • Identify potential system risks and trends in reliability and design solutions to address them.
  • Provide input on prioritizing engineering-led initiatives in short- and long-term planning and roadmaps.
  • Collaborate with internal product teams to understand their requirements and how we plan for their product growth as they integrate and depend on REDAPL.

Who You Are:

  • You have a BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related scientific field, or equivalent experience.
  • You have worked extensively with multiple types of data stores.
  • You have contributed to initiatives in a platform or infrastructure-focused environment for several years.
  • You have led impactful technical initiatives in an environment where performance, cost efficiency, ease of use, and resilience/operability are first-order concerns.
  • You have significant back-end engineering experience and have built and operated distributed systems to solve problems at high scale.

Bonus Points:

  • Experience working with Graph Databases such as Neo4j, Memgraph, JanusGraph, ArangoDB, Amazon Neptune, or PuppyGraph.
  • Production-grade experience with Apache Iceberg.
  • A solid grasp of query planning, or better yet — contributions to a production-grade query engine or related projects (e.g., Trino, Calcite, Substrait, DataFusion), ideally demonstrated through open-source contributions or PMC membership.

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:

  • Build tools for software engineers, just like yourself, and use those tools to accelerate your own development.
  • Have significant influence on product direction and business impact.
  • Work with skilled, knowledgeable, and kind teammates who are happy to teach and learn.
  • Competitive global benefits.
  • Continuous professional development.

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 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.

Datadog endeavors to make our Careers Page accessible to all users. If you would like to contact us regarding the accessibility of our website or need assistance completing the application process, please complete this form. This form is for accommodation requests only and cannot be used to inquire about the status of applications.

Privacy and AI Guidelines:

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.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this role fully remote or does it require office attendance?
Datadog operates as a hybrid workplace, meaning some in-office presence may be expected. The role is tagged #LI-Remote and is open across France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK, but candidates should clarify specific office requirements for their country during the interview process.
What is the main technology focus of this position?
The role centers on REDAPL, Datadog's Referential Data Platform, which ingests over 4.5 million updates per second. You'll work on query engine development, distributed data ingestion pipelines, and graph-based relationship traversal at massive scale.
Is experience with graph databases required?
Graph database experience (e.g., Neo4j, Memgraph, JanusGraph, ArangoDB, Amazon Neptune, PuppyGraph) is listed as a bonus, not a hard requirement. Strong distributed systems and backend engineering experience are the core expectations.
What salary can I expect for this role?
Datadog has not disclosed salary ranges for this posting. Compensation will vary by country of employment; candidates are encouraged to benchmark using resources like Levels.fyi for Datadog senior engineer compensation in their target country.
Does Datadog consider candidates who don't meet every qualification?
Yes — Datadog explicitly states that they value candidates from all backgrounds and encourage applications from those who are passionate about technology and want to grow, even if they don't meet every listed requirement on day one.
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