Senior Software Engineer - Streaming Platform Client

Senior Software Engineer - Streaming Platform Client

Data streams are mission-critical at Datadog, powering near real-time communication across the vast majority of our services. Our Streaming Platform group builds the core infrastructure and abstractions that ensure Datadog remains a trusted partner for engineers worldwide. See our blog post.

The Streaming Platform Client team sits at the heart of this ecosystem. We own the Rust client library (producers and consumers) with language bindings for Java, Go, and Python. We focus on building intuitive APIs and abstractions that make a powerful distributed system easy to adopt and operate for the hundreds of internal users of our library.

Our library runs on critical data paths that handle hundreds of millions of messages per second making performance, observability, and reliability paramount. We also develop and operate the service that bridges the clients fleet with the platform's control plane, handling complex balancing, scaling, and static stability challenges.

We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer to help us evolve these features. You will collaborate directly with our users, tackle performance-critical code, and solve complex distributed systems challenges across the control plane, client libraries, and data plane.

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:

Work within a distributed, high-impact team spanning Europe and the US, building critical technologies that power data pipelines for dozens of internal teams and hundreds of services.

• Architect and implement resilient interactions between our client libraries and the control plane.
• Optimize our high-throughput, low-level streaming library to push the boundaries of performance and efficiency.
• Champion the developer experience by providing exceptional support, technical documentation, and proactive troubleshooting for our wide user base.
• Lead high-stakes technical projects, maintaining end-to-end accountability for their delivery and quality.
• Collaborate with partner teams on delivering projects wider than your team's scope.
• Mentor junior engineers and interns, fostering a culture of technical excellence and shared knowledge.

Who You Are:

• You are a self-starter who experiments methodically, iterates rapidly, and views failure as a learning opportunity.
• You are a finisher who takes the projects through the finish line and does not stop at shipping code.
• You thrive in collaborative environments, championing a blameless culture and actively fostering the growth of your teammates.
• You communicate complex ideas effectively, with experience gathering requirements from stakeholders and leading high-impact technical initiatives.
• You are deeply committed to user experience, ensuring the tools you build empower developers.
• You have strong proficiency in low-level languages (ideally Rust).
• You have a passion for deep-dive investigations, particularly in performance optimization and debugging complex systems.
• You are curious about AI and actively leverage it to enhance your development workflow.
• Bonus: Direct experience operating or using large-scale streaming systems like Kafka.
• Bonus: Familiarity with language bindings and FFI.

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