Staff Product Designer, Modern Compute

About the role

Datadog is seeking a Staff Product Designer to join the Modern Compute team, focusing initially on container autoscaling. This role involves shaping the product direction for complex infrastructure systems, making them intuitive and actionable for engineers. You will lead the design process from initial problem framing to product delivery, collaborating closely with product and engineering teams.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Lead the complete product design lifecycle for Modern Compute, starting with the Autoscaling product.
• Define the evolving product direction through early exploration, detailed design, and implementation.
• Craft clear and reliable experiences for engineers making critical decisions about infrastructure performance, cost, and stability.
• Simplify intricate technical concepts while retaining necessary detail for expert users.
• Collaborate with product and engineering leaders to identify key challenges, clarify decisions, and align work across multiple teams.
• Establish high standards for visual and interaction design, including data-intensive workflows and edge cases.
• Develop reusable design patterns to enhance consistency across Modern Compute and the wider Datadog platform.
• Mentor other designers through feedback, critique, and direct collaboration.
• Create realistic prototypes using code and AI-powered coding agents, discerning when alternative tools or fidelity levels are more suitable.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience designing complex web-based products, including time at a Staff level or equivalent scope.
• Exceptional visual and interaction design skills, particularly for dense, technical, or data-rich interfaces.
• Proven ability to lead ambiguous product initiatives where your involvement significantly influenced the outcome.
• Skill in simplifying complex systems for expert users without compromising functionality.
• Comfort collaborating closely with product managers and engineers throughout development.
• Clear communication of complex ideas and the ability to build consensus across design, product, engineering, and senior leadership.
• A systemic design approach, creating patterns that extend beyond individual features and across teams.
• Ability to balance long-term product vision with hands-on execution and attention to detail.
• Active mentorship of other designers, contributing to overall design quality.
• Capability to design and build code-based prototypes using AI and coding agents, or a demonstrated aptitude to quickly acquire this skill.

Nice to have

• Experience designing infrastructure, observability, cloud, or developer tools.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes, containers, autoscaling, GitOps, YAML, or related infrastructure workflows.
• Experience designing products for SREs, platform engineers, or application developers.
• Experience working within a multi-product SaaS platform.
• History of creating design patterns adopted by multiple teams.

Skills & tools

• Product design
• Interaction design
• Visual design
• Prototyping (code-based, AI/coding agents)
• User experience (UX)
• User interface (UI)

Practical notes

This is a hybrid role. Datadog offers new hire stock equity (RSUs), an employee stock purchase plan (ESPP), continuous professional development, and a comprehensive benefits package including healthcare, dental, parental planning, mental health benefits, a 401(k) plan with match, paid time off, and fitness reimbursements. Datadog values diversity and encourages all qualified candidates to apply.