Datadog SME

Ampcus, Inc; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 120,000 - 155,000; Full time

Job summary

Ampcus Inc. is seeking a Datadog SME to onboard Azure-hosted applications onto Datadog, instrumenting services for metrics, logs, traces, and profiling, and deploying Datadog Agents across subscriptions, AKS clusters, App Services, and VMs.

You will assess telemetry from Azure Monitor and Application Insights, build dashboards, SLOs, and monitors, and wire alerts into ServiceNow and Teams, handing over with tagging and audit-ready documentation.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in CS, IS, or related field.
• 4-7 years in observability, monitoring, SRE, DevOps, or app support with hands-on Datadog on Azure.
• Experience onboarding Azure apps to Datadog; dashboards, alerts, and SLOs.

Responsibilities

• Onboard Azure-hosted apps to Datadog with agent deployment and config.
• Instrument telemetry (metrics, logs, traces) and build dashboards and monitors.
• Route alerts to ServiceNow and Teams; document handover artefacts.

Skills

SRE mindset

DevOps practices

Strong communication

On-call experience

Education

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Datadog

Azure

Terraform

Bicep/ARM

Helm

OpenTelemetry

Job description

Ampcus Inc. is a certified global provider of a broad range of Technology and Business consulting services. We are in search of a highly motivated candidate to join our talented Team. Role Overview

Inviting applications for the role of Datadog SME - Azure Application Observability Onboarding. In this role, you will onboard existing Azure-hosted applications onto the Datadog platform by instrumenting services for metrics, logs, traces, and profiling, and by deploying and configuring Datadog Agents and Azure integrations across subscriptions, AKS clusters, App Services, and virtual machine estates. You will assess each application's current monitoring footprint in Azure Monitor and Application Insights to determine whether telemetry should be forwarded as-is, re-instrumented natively with Datadog APM tracing libraries, or routed through OpenTelemetry, then build the dashboards, SLOs, and monitors that make the onboarded service production-ready - wiring alerts into ServiceNow for incident creation and Microsoft Teams for team notification, and handing over to the owning application team with tagging and documentation that stands up to audit.

Location

Chicago, IL (2 to 3 days in office expected)

Duration

Long Term

Responsibilities

• Hands-on expertise onboarding Azure-hosted applications onto Datadog, including:
  • Datadog Agent deployment and configuration across Azure VMs, AKS (Helm chart and Datadog Operator), App Service and Container Apps site extensions, and Azure Functions
  • Azure Native Datadog integration and/or App Registration-based setup for metric collection across subscriptions and management groups
  • Azure platform log forwarding via Diagnostic Settings, Event Hubs, and the Datadog log forwarder
  • APM and distributed tracing instrumentation using Datadog tracing libraries (.NET, Java, Python, Node.js) - auto-instrumentation plus custom spans
  • Log collection, parsing pipelines, grok processors, facets, and log-to-metric generation
  • Unified service tagging (env, service, version) mapped to Azure resource tags, subscriptions, and resource groups for a consistent taxonomy across onboarded apps
• Intermediate to advanced proficiency building Datadog observability assets, including:
  • Dashboards, timeboards, and notebooks
  • Monitors (metric, log, APM, anomaly, composite) with actionable thresholds and low noise
  • SLOs, error budgets, and service-level dashboards
  • Alert routing into ServiceNow (incident and change integration, correct assignment groups, priority and CMDB mapping) and Microsoft Teams (channel notifications, @mentions, escalation workflows), plus downtime and maintenance windows aligned to change calendars
• Working knowledge of the Azure platform Datadog is onboarded onto, including:
  • Azure Monitor, Application Insights, Log Analytics, and how they map to Datadog equivalents
  • Core Azure services - App Service, AKS, Functions, SQL Database, Cosmos DB, Storage, Service Bus, Event Hubs, API Management, Application Gateway
  • Azure identity and access concepts - Entra ID, service principals, managed identities, and RBAC scoping for monitoring access
  • AKS, containers, and CI/CD pipelines in Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions
  • Infrastructure-as-code for repeatable rollout - Terraform (Datadog and AzureRM providers), Bicep/ARM, Helm
  • OpenTelemetry collectors and vendor-neutral instrumentation concepts
• Practical understanding of migration from incumbent tools (Azure Monitor alert rules, Application Insights, AppDynamics, Dynatrace, New Relic, Splunk, ELK, SCOM) and mapping legacy dashboards and alerts to Datadog equivalents
• Awareness of Datadog cost drivers - host, custom metric, log indexing, and APM span volumes - along with Azure egress and Event Hub throughput considerations, and the levers used to keep ingest efficient
• Strong scripting, query, and troubleshooting skills, including PowerShell, Python or Bash, Azure CLI, the Datadog API, and Datadog query syntax for metrics and logs
• Clear written and verbal communication, with the ability to run onboarding sessions with application teams and document standards, runbooks, and handover artefacts

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree required. Preferably in Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field.
• 4-7 years of experience in observability, monitoring, SRE, DevOps, or application support, with hands-on Datadog delivery experience on Azure-hosted workloads.

Preferred Qualifications

• Datadog certification (Fundamentals, APM, or Log Management).
• Microsoft Azure certification (AZ-104, AZ-204, or AZ-400).
• Experience onboarding applications at scale across multiple Azure subscriptions or a multi-organization Datadog tenant.
• Experience building or maintaining Datadog-ServiceNow incident integrations and Teams-based alerting workflows in an ITIL-aligned environment.
• Exposure to Datadog Watchdog, Synthetic Monitoring, RUM, or Cloud Security Management.

Ampcus is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, protected veterans or individuals with disabilities.