AI Research Scientist - Datadog AI Research (DAIR)

Datadog, Inc.; Pittsburgh (Allegheny County); On-site; USD 320,000 - 400,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

New hire stock equity (RSUs)

Employee stock purchase plan (ESPP)

Collaborate with Datadog offices in NY

Job summary

Datadog is seeking a Research Scientist to partner with Research Engineers and translate research advances into product capabilities in cloud observability and security.

You will work on world models, trained agents, and multimodal data from metrics, traces, logs, and events, collaborating with product and engineering teams to prototype, evaluate, and contribute to scalable AI-powered features across Datadog's platform.

Qualifications

• PhD in Computer Science, ML, or related field.
• Publications in top venues (NeurIPS/ICML/ICLR/TMLR) advantageous.

Responsibilities

• Conduct research in generative AI and foundation models for observability.
• Train multimodal models on large telemetry data using distributed training.
• Design simulated environments and RL loops for on-policy training and evaluation.
• Collaborate with Product and Engineering to integrate capabilities into Datadog products.
• Publish research findings and contribute to open-source model artifacts and benchmarks.

Skills

Generative modelling

World models

AI agents

Reinforcement learning

Multimodal learning

Distributed training

PyTorch

Education

PhD in Computer Science / ML / related field

Tools

DeepSpeed

Megatron-LM

PyTorch

Job description

As a Research Scientist on our team, you will partner with Research Engineers, working on fundamental research problems and collaborating with Datadog's product and engineering teams to translate research advances into products.

Building on our track record of AI-powered solutions (e.g., Bits AI, Bits Evolve, and our time series foundation model), Datadog AI Research tackles high-risk, high-reward problems grounded in real-world challenges in cloud observability and security.

We are focused on two research areas:

1. World Models for Observability -- Training multimodal foundation models that learn the joint dynamics of distributed systems across metrics, traces, logs, topology, and events. These models power advanced forecasting, anomaly detection, root cause analysis, counterfactual simulation ("what if?"), and provide a learned planning backbone for our autonomous agents.
2. Trained Agents for Observability -- Post-training models to operate autonomously across Datadog's domain. SRE incident response is our first target, with a clear path to code repair, security response, and infrastructure optimization. We build the simulation environments, RL training loops, and evaluation infrastructure needed to train agents that match or surpass frontier models at a fraction of the cost.

What You'll Do:

• Conduct research in generative AI and machine learning, building specialized foundation models and trained agents for observability
• Train multimodal models on large-scale, diverse telemetry data (metrics, logs, traces, topology, events) using distributed training infrastructure
• Design and build simulated environments and RL training loops for on-policy agent training and evaluation
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams (Product, Engineering) to integrate capabilities like multimodal world modeling and autonomous agents into Datadog's products
• Stay at the forefront of foundation models, world models, and RL-based agent research
• Contribute to research publications, present at top-tier conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML), and help open-source key model artifacts and benchmarks

Who You Are:

• You hold a PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field, with deep expertise in areas like generative modeling, world models, AI agents, reinforcement learning, or multimodal learning (or have equivalent experience)
• You have extensive experience designing and implementing deep learning models and agents, with a strong background in distributed training frameworks (e.g., DeepSpeed, Megatron-LM) and ML libraries (PyTorch)
• You have a track record of impactful publications at top-tier venues (e.g., NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, TMLR)
• You are familiar with efficient training, post-training, and inference techniques for large foundation models
• You can explain complex models and research findings to both technical and non-technical audiences

Bonus Points (any of the following):

• Experience bridging research and real-world product applications, especially with large foundation models, world models, or RL-trained agents
• Passion for pushing the boundaries of AI with a focus on customer impact and scalable deployment
• Experience writing production data pipelines and applications
• Hands-on experience with GPU programming and optimization, including CUDA

Benefits and Growth:

• Competitive global benefits
• New hire stock equity (RSUs) and employee stock purchase plan (ESPP)
• Opportunity to collaborate closely with colleagues across the Datadog offices in New York City and Paris
• Opportunity to attend and present at conferences and meetups
• Intra-departmental mentor and buddy program for in-house networking
• An inclusive company culture, ability to join our Community Guilds (Datadog employee resource groups)

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 (NASDAQ: DDOG) is a global SaaS business, delivering a rare combination of growth and profitability. We are on a mission to break down silos and solve complexity in the cloud age by enabling digital transformation, cloud migration, and infrastructure monitoring of our customers’ entire technology stacks. Built by engineers, for engineers, Datadog is used by organizations of all sizes across a wide range of industries. Together, we champion professional development, diversity of thought, innovation, and work excellence to empower continuous growth. Join the pack and become part of a collaborative, pragmatic, and thoughtful people-first community where we solve tough problems, take smart risks, and celebrate one another. Learn more about #DatadogLife on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Datadog Learning Center.

Equal Opportunity at Datadog:

Datadog is an Affirimative Action and Equal Opportunity Employer and 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 more. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. Here are our Candidate Legal Notices for your reference.

Your Privacy:

Any information you submit to Datadog as part of your application will be processed in accordance with Datadog’s Applicant and Candidate Privacy Notice.

Datadog offers a competitive salary and equity package, and may include variable compensation. Actual compensation is based on factors such as the candidate's skills, qualifications, and experience. In addition, Datadog offers a wide range of best in class, comprehensive and inclusive employee benefits for this role including healthcare, dental, parental planning, and mental health benefits, a 401(k) plan and match, paid time off, fitness reimbursements, and a discounted employee stock purchase plan.

The reasonably estimated yearly salary for this role at Datadog is: $320,000—$400,000 USD

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.

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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.