Staff Forward Deployed Engineer, Feature Flags

Datadog•New York, NY

1d•$244,000 - $305,000•Onsite

About The Position

As a Forward Deployed Engineer on the Feature Flags team, you'll partner directly with customers to accelerate their feature flag implementations — from initial architecture consulting through prototype builds to full-scale migrations. This role is for someone who wants to write code with customers, not just advise them. You'll work hands-on inside customer codebases to unblock complex, high-stakes deployments, directly influencing deal velocity and customer success. Working closely with Sales, Solutions, and Engineering, you'll be the technical force that turns a signed contract into a live, adopted implementation.

Requirements

5 years of professional software engineering experience, with hands-on coding ability across the stack you're deployed into
Experience with feature flagging, experimentation, or config management systems (internal or vendor)
Comfortable dropping into unfamiliar codebases, languages, and frameworks quickly — no specific stack required, but strong fundamentals and fast ramp-up
Experience shipping production code, not just prototypes — you understand the difference between a demo and something that survives a migration
Customer-facing experience, or strong motivation to build it — comfortable being in the room with customer engineers, understanding their constraints, and adapting your approach
Skilled at simplifying complex technical tradeoffs for both engineering and non-engineering stakeholders
Motivated by outcomes — deal velocity, successful migrations, and customer trust — not just elegant code
Comfortable operating with ambiguity, moving between architecture conversations and hands-on implementation in the same week

Nice To Haves

Experience in a forward-deployed, consulting, or professional services engineering role
Exposure to large-scale system migrations
Prior work in a startup or fast-scaling environment where you had to own ambiguous problems end-to-end

Responsibilities

Serve as the hands-on technical partner for strategic customers implementing Datadog Feature Flags, from pre-sales technical validation through post-sales delivery
Consult on flag architecture and implementation approach for complex environments — multi-service, multi-platform, high-scale deployments
Build prototype flag implementations directly in customer codebases to prove value and de-risk technical decisions early in the sales cycle
Implement flags across diverse and advanced deployment modes (server-side, client-side, edge, mobile, streaming/real-time) tailored to each customer's stack
Drive full flag migrations to completion — including legacy system cutover — efficiently and with minimal customer engineering burden
Identify patterns across customer implementations and feed them back to Product and Engineering to improve the core product and reduce future implementation time
Collaborate closely with Engineering on technical edge cases, product gaps, and implementation tooling
Partner with Sales and Solutions to accelerate deal cycles by removing technical risk and uncertainty