About the role
<p>This role is part of Datadog’s Security Agent team, which powers critical security capabilities across Workload Protection, Vulnerability Management, Cloud Security products, and other emerging security offerings. As a Staff Software Engineer, you will lead the design and development of low-level Linux instrumentation and runtime security technologies that help customers detect threats, monitor system activity, and protect cloud-native workloads at scale. You will work on complex technical challenges involving eBPF, Linux kernel internals, performance-sensitive systems, and large-scale data collection while influencing technical direction across multiple product teams. This role offers significant ownership, broad organizational impact, and the opportunity to shape the future of Datadog’s security platform.</p> <p>At Datadog, we place value in our office culture - the relationships and collaboration it builds and the creativity it brings to the table. We operate as a hybrid workplace to ensure our Datadogs can create a work-life harmony that best fits them.</p> <p><strong>What You’ll Do:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Lead the architecture and development of security agent capabilities that power runtime threat detection and workload protection across Datadog Security products.</li> <li>Design and build reusable eBPF-based monitoring functionality for process, file, and network visibility within Linux environments.</li> <li>Drive end-to-end delivery of new features, from technical strategy and design through implementation, testing, and rollout.</li> <li>Establish and evolve testing methodologies that improve platform coverage, detection quality, reliability, and performance.</li> <li>Partner with product, security, infrastructure, and engineering teams to deliver shared platform capabilities used across multiple Datadog products.</li> <li>Provide technical leadership by influencing engineering direction, mentoring peers, and helping resolve complex cross-functional challenges.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Who You Are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>You have significant experience building software in Linux environments, including knowledge of Linux internals, kernel APIs, or systems programming.</li> <li>You have hands-on experience with eBPF, kernel-level instrumentation, driver development, networking systems, agent development, or related low-level technologies.</li> <li>You've built and run systems where performance and reliability actually matter.</li> <li>You have experience building and maintaining production software across diverse Linux distributions and kernel versions.</li> <li>You are product-minded and customer-focused, balancing technical excellence with customer impact and usability.</li> </ul><div class="content-con