Research Manager - Post-Training for Agents (NORAM)

Datadog • New York, NY

2d • $244,000 - $305,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

As a Research Manager within Datadog AI Research (DAIR), you will lead a team conducting fundamental research in post-training and autonomous agents while remaining deeply engaged in the technical direction. The work advances reinforcement learning, simulated environments, synthetic data generation, and agent evaluation for agents operating across complex real-world systems. You will provide technical leadership, mentor and develop researchers and research engineers, shape research direction, and collaborate with Datadog product and engineering teams to translate research advances into products. The role is intended for an exceptional researcher or technical leader who wants to retain a hands-on research identity while leading a high-performing team.

Datadog operates as a hybrid workplace and values the office culture and collaboration it fosters. The role involves research grounded in observability and security, cross-functional work, research publications and conference presentations, and potentially open-sourcing model artifacts and benchmarks.

Requirements

• PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• Deep expertise in areas such as reinforcement learning, AI agents, post-training, or generative modeling.
• Demonstrated ability to lead technically ambitious research at meaningful scale in an industry research lab, startup, academic environment, or another research setting.
• Extensive hands-on experience designing or implementing reinforcement learning systems, agent training methods, simulated environments, synthetic data pipelines, or evaluation frameworks.
• Track record of research impact through influential publications, significant model or system contributions, widely used research artifacts, or equivalent technical achievements.
• Senior technical experience leading, mentoring, and developing teams of researchers or engineers while remaining hands-on in technical direction and execution.
• Ability to communicate complex research findings effectively to technical and non-technical audiences.

Responsibilities

• Lead research in agent post-training and reinforcement learning, setting technical direction for ambitious research programs grounded in observability and security.
• Guide and mentor researchers and research engineers while contributing to research strategy, experimentation, model development, and technical problem-solving.
• Design and advance reinforcement learning approaches, post-training methods, and training loops for agents operating in complex environments.
• Build simulated environments, synthetic data generation approaches, and evaluation frameworks to enable scalable agent training and rigorous measurement.
• Collaborate with Research, Product, and Engineering teams to translate autonomous-agent advances into scalable Datadog capabilities.
• Contribute to research publications, present at conferences such as NeurIPS, ICLR, and ICML, and help open-source model artifacts and benchmarks.
• Develop and support a research team while maintaining a strong technical identity.

Benefits

• Competitive global benefits.
• New-hire stock equity (RSUs) and employee stock purchase plan (ESPP).
• Opportunity to collaborate with colleagues across Datadog offices in New York City and Paris.
• Opportunity to attend and present at conferences and meetups.
• Intra-departmental mentor and buddy program for in-house networking.
• Inclusive company culture and ability to join Community Guilds (employee resource groups).
• Healthcare, dental, parental planning, and mental health benefits.
• 401(k) plan and match.
• Paid time off.
• Fitness reimbursements.
• Discounted employee stock purchase plan.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree