Staff Applied Scientist - Agentic Interfaces

Datadog; New York (NY); On-site; USD 276,000 - 345,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock Options

Professional Development

Competitive Benefits

Job summary

Datadog is seeking a Staff Applied Scientist in New York to own evaluation strategies for AI agent integrations. The role involves defining metrics, building datasets, and collaborating with AI engineers to enhance tool selection and retrieval relevance.

The ideal candidate will have 10+ years of experience, a high level of expertise in machine learning, and a proven track record in product-driven environments. Competitive salary and benefits package offered.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of relevant engineering or applied science experience.
• Proven track record of leading ML initiatives in product-driven environments.
• Experience with measurement of ML systems at scale.

Responsibilities

• Own the evaluation strategy for AI agent integrations.
• Build eval datasets and regression harnesses.
• Drive improvements to tool-selection accuracy and retrieval relevance.

Skills

Machine Learning

Evaluation and Measurement

Technical Leadership

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Education

BS/MS/PhD in a Scientific Field

Tools

Data Analysis Tools

Job description

Team description

At Datadog, AI agents are becoming first-class consumers of observability, security, and software delivery data — from third-party coding agents like Claude Code, Cursor, and Copilot, to our own Bits SRE, Bits Assistant, and Bits Dev Agent. The Agentic Interfaces team owns the platform that connects these agents to Datadog: the MCP Server, the tools and retrieval surfaces agents call into, and — critically — the evaluation systems that tell us whether an agent's experience on Datadog data is actually getting better over time.

This role is about that last piece. We're hiring a Staff Applied Scientist to define what good means for an Agentic interface at Datadog and to build the measurement systems that make it true. good isn't one number — it spans answer quality, tool-selection accuracy, retrieval relevance, latency, token cost, and end-to-end agent success on real customer workflows. You'll design the evals, build the datasets, define the metrics, and partner with the AI engineers on the team to land the platform that lets every product group at Datadog ship integrations that are demonstrably better release over release.

The space is full of open research questions. How do you evaluate an agent end-to-end when the trajectory is non-deterministic? How do you score tool selection when the tool catalog has hundreds of entries and grows weekly? How do you build a measurement system that catches regressions across first-party and third-party agents at once, without each team writing their own harness? If those are the problems you want to spend your time on, come build this with us.

What You’ll Do:

• Own the evaluation strategy for Datadog's AI agent integrations. Define the metrics — offline and online, quality and cost, single-turn and trajectory-level — that the team and the broader organization optimize against.
• Build the eval datasets, golden traces, and regression harnesses that catch quality changes before they hit customers, and make those assets reusable by every team contributing tools to the platform.
• Drive measurable improvements to retrieval relevance, tool-selection accuracy, and context efficiency, partnering closely with the AI engineers on the team who build the underlying platform.
• Run applied research on the open problems in agent-data interaction: tool selection under large catalogs, multi-turn agent evaluation, grounding and hallucination control on live telemetry, cost/quality tradeoffs at scale.
• Partner with the Bits SRE, Bits Assistant, and Bits Dev Agent teams so first-party agents benefit from the same measurement substrate as third-party integrations, and so learnings move freely in both directions.
• Provide technical leadership across the Agentic Interfaces team and the broader organization through design reviews, working groups, and mentorship, and represent the team externally through talks, blog posts, and contributions to the open agent ecosystem.

Who You Are:

• You have a BS/MS/PhD in a scientific field, or equivalent experience.
• 10+ years of relevant engineering or applied science experience, including time as a technical lead.
• Proven track record of leading ML or GenAI initiatives in a product-driven environment, from research through production.
• Significant experience with evaluation, experimentation, or measurement of ML systems at scale.
• You bring a strong product mindset and are comfortable driving initiatives across cross-functional teams.
• You thrive in ambiguity and can make sound technical calls when the path isn’t yet defined.

Benefits and Growth:

• New hire stock equity (RSUs) and employee stock purchase plan (ESPP)
• Continuous professional development, product training, and career pathing
• An inclusive company culture, giving programs, and the ability to join our Community Guilds (Datadog employee resource groups)
• Competitive global benefits and global Spring Health benefits for employees and dependents age 6+

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: $276,000 — $345,000 USD

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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