Manager II, Engineering - Applied AI (NorAm)

Datadog's Applied AI group builds AI foundations and AI-powered features across the Datadog platform. We train ML models, build agents, and ship natural language interfaces that help thousands of customers detect problems, investigate incidents, and act on their infrastructure. Our teams work with some of the world's richest observability data, hundreds of trillions of data points per day, to build production AI at real scale.

Our work spans ML models, agentic systems, conversational AI, foundation models, and the infrastructure that supports them. As a Manager II, you will lead multiple teams of engineers, applied scientists, and managers in this space. You own the technical direction and the team culture. You drive work from research through production, partner with product to set priorities, and help shape how Datadog uses AI to close the loop between detecting a problem and fixing it.

At Datadog, we place value in our office culture—the relationships and collaboration it builds and the creativity it brings. We operate as a hybrid workplace to ensure our Datadogs can create a work-life harmony that best fits them.

What You'll Do:

• Lead and grow multiple teams of engineers, applied scientists, and managers working on AI-powered features across the Datadog platform
• Set technical vision and strategy for your area in partnership with Product
• Ship AI products end-to-end, from data pipelines and model training through evaluation, deployment, and production operations
• Coach and develop senior engineers and managers, building a culture of high performance, psychological safety, and clear feedback
• Drive collaboration across Applied AI, product, and partner engineering teams to deliver on Datadog's AI priorities
• Build evaluation and quality practices for AI systems, offline benchmarks, online metrics, and continuous improvement loops
• Own operational excellence for your teams' systems: reliability, on-call, incident response, and technical quality
• Hire and plan for organizational growth as the AI group scales
• Help shape Datadog's broader AI roadmap and promote best practices in ML engineering and career development across the organization

Who You Are:

• An experienced technical leader with a strong background in AI, machine learning, or data science
• Proven track record building and shipping ML or AI-powered products in production
• Experience leading and mentoring multiple teams, including senior engineers and engineering managers
• Deep technical expertise in one or more areas: large language models, agentic systems, anomaly detection, time-series modeling, NLP, retrieval-augmented generation, or ML infrastructure
• Comfortable partnering with Product to set vision and strategy, and turning ambiguous problems into clear plans
• A strong people manager who can attract, develop, and retain top AI and engineering talent
• BS/MS/PhD in Machine Learning, Computer Science, Engineering, or related field, or equivalent professional experience

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:

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