Distinguished Architect, AI

Datadog; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 300,000 - 484,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Best-in-breed onboarding

Generous global benefits

New hire stock equity (RSUs) and employee stock purchase plan (ESPP)

Continuous professional development and product training

Inclusive company culture with Community Guilds and Inclusion Talks

Job summary

Datadog is looking for a customer-focused Distinguished Architect to join their Product Solutions Architecture team. This role involves influencing key decision-makers in AI labs, guiding best practices in AI adoption, and leading high-level architecture discussions.

The ideal candidate has over 10 years of experience with distributed systems and is deeply knowledgeable about the AI/LLM ecosystem. Datadog offers a hybrid workplace and a competitive salary of $300,000—$484,000 USD.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience with at-scale distributed systems architecture, high-performance computing, or large-scale infrastructure.
• Deep familiarity with the AI/LLM ecosystem and modern orchestration frameworks.
• Excellent customer-facing presentation skills and ability to discuss complex technical details.

Responsibilities

• Demonstrate thought leadership in the AI/LLM space.
• Strategically partner with technical Founders, Heads of Infrastructure, and Research Lead peers.
• Lead deep-dive architecture reviews and design engagements with customer teams.

Skills

Technical Multiplication

Stakeholder Management

Presentation Skills

Distributed Systems Architecture

AI/LLM Ecosystem Knowledge

Communication Skills

Education

Bachelor’s degree in engineering or related field

Master’s degree preferred

Job description

Datadog is expanding the Technical Solutions (TS) organization by seeking a customer-focused, deeply technical Distinguished Architect to join our Product Solutions Architecture (PSA) team. In this role, you will act as a technical multiplier for the world's leading AI labs and AI-native companies. You will bridge the gap between their bleeding-edge infrastructure aspirations and Datadog’s technology roadmap, ensuring our platform natively solves the unique observability challenges of training and deploying foundational models at scale.

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

• Leadership: Demonstrate thought leadership in the AI/LLM space. Influence key decision makers and stakeholders by connecting technical capabilities to organizational and business impact.
• Advisory: Strategically partner with highly technical Founders, Heads of Infrastructure, and Research Lead peers. Guide them on best practices and emerging industry trends in the AI/LLM space. Lead high-level technical and architectural conversations around AI adoption.
• Presentations: Lead deep-dive architecture reviews and design engagements with customer teams and their leaders to share industry trends, best practices, and demonstrate how Datadog can support high-throughput hyper scale AI workloads.
• GTM: Identify emerging AI-native technology shifts and feed them directly back to Datadog Product Management. Co-create custom observability integrations and solutions alongside Product SAs to keep Datadog at the absolute forefront of the AI stack.
• Collaboration: Collaborate with Product Solutions Architecture (PSA), Sales, Sales Engineering and Marketing in providing high-quality technical resources to a broad audience of practitioners and economic buyers.
• Hiring: Assist leadership in recruiting and hiring of top talent for the Product Solutions Architecture and Field CTO teams.

Who You Are

• Industry Experience: 10+ years of experience with at-scale distributed systems architecture, high-performance computing, or large-scale infrastructure. Deep familiarity with the AI/LLM ecosystem, accelerator hardware (GPUs/TPUs), and modern orchestration frameworks.
• Strategic Thinker: Able to think long term and creatively about a wide variety of technical and business challenges
• Stakeholder Management: Proven experience interacting with and influencing elite individual contributors, research scientists, and technical founders in flat, rapid-growth environments.
• Technologist: A true close-to-the-metal technologist who maintains deep hands-on credibility and can white-board architectural solutions seamlessly with senior engineers. Strong understanding of best practices and real world challenges AI/LLM Ops and LLM Observability (LLMO).
• Presenter: Excellent customer-facing presentation skills for large audiences, comfortable discussing complex technical details as well as with briefing executives or non-technical personas.
• Communicator: Excellent verbal and written communication skills, ability to link product functionality to business objectives, value realization and ROI.
• Travel: Able to travel via auto, train or air up to 50% of the time
• Education: Bachelor’s degree in engineering or related field, Master’s degree preferred

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

• Best-in-breed onboarding
• Generous global benefits
• Intra-departmental mentor and buddy program for in-house networking
• New hire stock equity (RSUs) and employee stock purchase plan (ESPP)
• Continuous professional development, product training, and career pathing
• An inclusive company culture, able to join our Community Guilds and Inclusion Talks

Benefits and Growth listed above may vary based on the country of your employment and the nature of your employment with Datadog.

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:

$300,000—$484,000 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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