Staff AI Engineer - Cloud FinOps

As a Staff Software Engineer on Datadog’s Cloud FinOps team, you will help shape how the company understands, analyzes, and optimizes its cloud infrastructure spend. This role sits at the intersection of engineering, finance, and executive leadership, building the systems and insights that drive company-wide decisions about infrastructure usage, AI usage and efficiency. You will design scalable solutions that improve cost attribution, forecasting, and visibility across Datadog’s multi-cloud environment. This is a high-impact opportunity to influence strategic decisions, solve complex infrastructure efficiency challenges, and help define the future of FinOps capabilities at Datadog.

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:

• Design and evolve internal platforms and tools that provide visibility into Datadog’s cloud infrastructure costs across AWS, GCP, and Azure.

• Partner with Finance, Engineering, and Executive Leadership to analyze cloud spend trends and inform strategic decisions.

• Develop scalable models and systems for cloud cost attribution across complex shared infrastructure.

• Build forward-looking FinOps capabilities that help teams proactively manage and optimize infrastructure usage.

• Work cross-functionally with engineering leaders to understand system architecture and translate infrastructure usage patterns into actionable cost insights.

• Influence company-wide initiatives around cost efficiency, forecasting, and infrastructure planning.

• Raises team performance by leading by example, building systems and patterns that improve productivity and autonomy by guiding with pragmatic technical judgment while being a hands-on contributor.

Who You Are:

• Experience designing or operating distributed systems at scale.

• Proven ability to lead large cross-organizational technical initiatives and influence senior stakeholders.

• Strong communication skills and ability to explain complex technical concepts to engineering, finance, and executive audiences.

• Experience working with cloud infrastructure platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure.

• Ability to operate autonomously in ambiguous problem spaces and develop scalable solutions.

• Interest in infrastructure efficiency, cost attribution, and FinOps-style problem domains.

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:

• Generous and competitive benefits package

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

• Continuous career development and pathing opportunities

• Employee-focused best in class onboarding

• Internal mentor and cross-departmental buddy program

• Friendly and inclusive workplace culture

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

#LI-Hybrid

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:

$234,000—$300,000 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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Privacy and AI Guidelines:

Any information you submit to Datadog as part of your application will be processed in accordance with Datadog’s Applicant and Candidate Privacy Notice. For information on our AI policy, please visit Interviewing at Datadog AI Guidelines.