Software Engineer - Linux kernel / eBPF (APM)

The eBPF APM team is building a zero-instrumentation observability solution that automatically discovers services on every host, supports both plaintext and TLS-encrypted traffic, classifies Layer 7 protocols, decodes service-level traffic, and reports RED (requests, errors, duration) metrics. Leveraging deep expertise in eBPF, the team operates across a wide range of Linux kernel versions, distributions, and complex customer environments. In addition to low-level networking, the team solves challenges related to protocol versioning, TLS detection across diverse languages and runtimes, and resilient performance in production systems.

We're looking for a senior engineer with strong systems-level thinking and a good understanding of Linux. You should be comfortable working close to the kernel, ideally with experience in eBPF, or with a strong desire to dive into it. Proficiency in Go is essential, and familiarity with networking protocols, TLS internals, or distributed tracing is a strong advantage.

You'll join a high-impact team tackling ambitious technical challenges—like decoding traffic across multiple protocols, and ensuring high-fidelity metrics in complex, real-world environments. You'll be expected to lead design and implementation efforts, contribute to roadmap planning, and collaborate across teams to ensure our solution remains robust, scalable, and frictionless for our users.

This role is a great fit for engineers who thrive on low-level, performance-sensitive problems, and want to shape the future of observability through cutting-edge kernel technology.

At Datadog, we place value in our office culture - the relationships that it builds, the creativity it brings to the table, and the collaboration of being together. We operate as a hybrid workplace to ensure our employees can create a work-life harmony that best fits them.

What You'll Do:

Design and build core components of our zero-instrumentation APM product using eBPF and Go
Develop systems to auto-discover services, classify L7 protocols, and extract RED metrics from both plaintext and TLS traffic
Solve complex challenges around protocol parsing, encryption handling, and performance at the kernel level
Ensure broad compatibility across Linux kernel versions, distributions, and diverse customer environments
Collaborate across teams to drive technical direction, improve reliability, and scale the system for production use

Who You Are:

You have significant experience in backend or systems-level development, with strong proficiency in Go or similar languages
You're comfortable working close to the Linux kernel and have experience (or interest) in eBPF, networking, or observability tooling
You care deeply about performance and efficiency
You've built or operated scalable systems in complex environments and understand how to design for reliability and compatibility
You thrive in a fast-paced, technically deep environment, and are excited to solve hard problems with a small, focused team

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:

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

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

About Datadog:

Datadog (NASDAQ: DDOG) is a global SaaS business, delivering a rare combination of growth and profitability. We are on a mission to break down silos and solve complexity in the cloud age by enabling digital transformation, cloud migration, and infrastructure monitoring of our customers' entire technology stacks. Built by engineers, for engineers, Datadog is used by organizations of all sizes across a wide range of industries. Together, we champion professional development, diversity of thought, innovation, and work excellence to empower continuous growth. Join the pack and become part of a collaborative, pragmatic, and thoughtful people-first community where we solve tough problems, take smart risks, and celebrate one another. Learn more about #DatadogLife on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Datadog Learning Center.

Equal Opportunity at Datadog:

Datadog is an Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Employer and 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 more. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. Here are our Candidate Legal Notices for your reference.

Your Privacy:

Any information you submit to Datadog as part of your application will be processed in accordance with Datadog's Applicant and Candidate Privacy Notice.