AI Systems & Engineering Lead — Applied ML

Datadog; Paris; On-site; EUR 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Datadog's Applied AI team builds cost-efficient specialized models and AI security capabilities, turning research into production systems that reach customers. We sit at the intersection of research and product, moving fast from idea to customer impact and setting up for growth.

Datadog is seeking a people-focused technical leader to mentor engineers and researchers, anchor early-stage work to concrete customer problems, and own end-to-end delivery of high-quality AI systems from exploration to

Qualifications

• Leadership experience managing engineers and applied scientists in a fast-moving domain.
• Deep expertise in AI/ML areas such as LLMs, RAG, semantic search, or NLP.
• Strong evaluation mindset for offline benchmarks and online metrics.
• Ability to anchor early-stage work in customer problems and define success criteria.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop a team of engineers and applied scientists focused on cost-efficient specialized models and AI security capabilities.
• Collaborate with product managers, research teams, and cross-functional partners to shape bets from framing to adoption.
• Own end-to-end delivery of AI systems from early research to production-grade reliability.
• Define quality standards and guide offline and online evaluation pipelines to measure quality and detect drift.
• Drive cross-team collaboration and knowledge sharing across the AI organization.
• Support career growth through coaching, feedback, and hiring contributions.

Skills

People management

AI/ML expertise

Technical leadership

Education

MS/PhD in ML/CS/Engineering

Tools

Python

ML frameworks

Job description

Datadog's Applied AI team builds cost-efficient specialized models and AI security capabilities, turning research into production systems that reach customers. We sit at the intersection of research and product, moving fast from idea to customer impact and setting up for growth.

Datadog is seeking a people-focused technical leader to mentor engineers and researchers, anchor early-stage work to concrete customer problems, and own end-to-end delivery of high-quality AI systems from exploration to