Staff Software Engineer - Linux/Kernel

The eBPF APM team builds Datadog’s zero-instrumentation observability platform, enabling automatic service discovery, Layer 7 protocol classification, traffic decoding, and high-fidelity RED (requests, errors, duration) metrics from both plaintext and TLS-encrypted traffic—without requiring customer code changes.

This work spans kernel-space eBPF, user-space Go services, and large-scale distributed systems, operating reliably across diverse Linux kernels, distributions, runtimes, and real-world production environments. The team tackles challenges in protocol evolution, TLS detection across languages and frameworks, and performance-critical data collection at scale.

We are looking for a Staff Engineer who will act as a technical owner and multiplier—driving architecture, influencing the roadmap, and ensuring our APM platform remains robust, scalable, and easy to adopt as Datadog and our customers grow.

At Datadog, Staff Engineers are expected to deliver impact through technical leadership, not just individual contribution. This role offers the opportunity to shape a foundational observability product used at massive scale.

Datadog operates as a hybrid workplace, valuing in-person collaboration while supporting work-life balance.

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

 

What You’ll Do:

• Own major technical areas of the zero-instrumentation APM system, from design through long-term evolution and operational maturity
• Define and drive architecture for kernel-level traffic capture, L7 protocol decoding, and metric extraction using eBPF and Go
• Lead high-impact initiatives addressing protocol parsing, TLS visibility, kernel compatibility, and performance at scale
• Set technical direction and standards for reliability, performance, and maintainability across the team
• Partner cross-functionally with Agent, Tracing, Security, Runtime, and Product teams to align on system design and roadmap priorities

 

Who You Are: 

• You have deep experience in backend or systems engineering, with strong proficiency in Go and/or C/C++
• You are comfortable operating close to the Linux kernel, with experience in eBPF, networking, observability, or similarly low-level systems
• You consistently think at a system and organizational scale, making thoughtful tradeoffs between performance, correctness, velocity, and long-term sustainability
• You have built, evolved, or operated large-scale production systems in complex and heterogeneous environments
• You demonstrate technical leadership without relying on authority—you influence architecture, unblock teams, and raise the technical bar through collaboration
• You have a strong bias for performance, efficiency, and reliability, especially in resource-constrained or performance-sensitive contexts
• You thrive in ambiguity and take ownership of ill-defined, high-impact problems
• You are excited to leverage AI-assisted development tools to improve productivity, code quality, and system design - or are eager to learn
• You have demonstrated ability to use AI coding tools in day-to-day workflows and validate, critique, and refine AI-generated output.
• Bonus: you’re motivated to push the boundaries of how AI can improve software engineering best practices and contribute to building AI-enabled products.

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