Manager I, Engineering - APM SDK Capabilities

Datadog • New York, NY

78d • $187,000 - $240,000

About The Position

APM is a critical part of Datadog’s observability platform. It’s where developers go to understand how their services behave in production. But observability doesn’t start in the UI; it starts at the edge: when telemetry is generated in-process and delivered in a way that’s consistent, reliable, and extensible across every service, language, and runtime. That’s where the APM SDK Capabilities team comes in. This team builds the core infrastructure that underpins all our tracing libraries: from configuration systems and startup-time validation to extension points and APIs that work seamlessly across both Datadog-native and OpenTelemetry-based instrumentation. Their work enables product features across the entire APM suite while keeping the developer experience smooth, consistent, and predictable, no matter which language or framework our customers use. As the Engineering Manager for APM SDK Capabilities, you’ll lead a senior, polyglot team working at the heart of Datadog’s instrumentation strategy. You’ll partner with APM and OpenTelemetry product teams, guide technical direction across multiple language SDKs, and help shape how thousands of engineering teams onboard and scale observability with Datadog. You’ll work cross-functionally with teams to ensure that instrumentation isn’t just powerful, but also easy to adopt and built to last. We’re looking for an experienced engineering leader who thrives at the intersection of infrastructure and developer experience. You should care about well-designed APIs, observability-first thinking, and building systems that empower other developers. This is a high-leverage role that will influence how developers across the industry understand and instrument their applications.

Requirements

• An experienced Engineering Manager with a track record of shipping
• Experienced in two or more languages and comfortable building cross-runtime systems
• Have a passion for libraries and OSS software development
• Deep experience working on or with observability tooling
• You care about developer experience, clean APIs, and reliable systems
• Highly collaborative
• An ability to pivot from high level product narratives to highly technical implementation details (and articulate how one impacts the other)
• Possesses experience with one or more of: SDK or library development, observability tooling, OSS software development

Responsibilities

• Lead a polyglot team of 5-7 engineers and partner closely with Product and Engineering teams across Datadog to deliver industry-leading capabilities that power consistent, scalable, and intuitive instrumentation across languages
• Drive adoption of key features like runtime metrics and startup diagnostics by ensuring they are safe, valuable, and enabled by default
• Shape the strategy and execution for APM configuration management - making it simple, observable, and extensible for customers of all sizes
• Contribute to Datadog’s presence in the OpenTelemetry ecosystem by influencing specifications and aligning SDK infrastructure with industry standards

Benefits

• New hire stock equity (RSUs) and employee stock purchase plan (ESPP)
• Continuous professional development, product training, and career pathing
• Intradepartmental mentor and buddy program for in-house networking
• An inclusive company culture, ability to join our Community Guilds (Datadog employee resource groups)
• Access to Inclusion Talks, our Internal panel discussions
• Free, global mental health benefits for employees and dependents age 6+
• Competitive global benefits

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager
• Number of Employees: 1,001-5,000 employees