Senior Staff Product Designer, Design Lab

Datadog
New York, NY
On-site

Who this role is best for

Candidates with extensive product design experience and systems thinking will find this leadership role in a technical, high-impact domain.

Best fit for

  • Candidates with 12+ years of product design experience and a track record of scaling design patterns
    — “You have 12+ years of experience in product and/or visual design.”
  • Individuals who can influence executive stakeholders and align cross-functional teams around a unified vision
    — “Influence stakeholders across design, engineering, product, and executive partners.”
  • Candidates with a strong background in information architecture and holistic system work
    — “You think in information architecture, hierarchy, and holistic system work.”

Things to consider

  • The role demands a high level of visual execution and leadership in a small, focused team.
    — “You'll work as part of a small, focused team defining the future state before it scales.”
  • The position requires operating in ambiguity and within large, complex organizations.
    — “You're comfortable operating in ambiguity and in large, complex organizations.”

How to stand out

  • Highlight your experience in translating visual principles into tangible product decisions.
    — “Translate visual principles into concrete decisions about hierarchy, layout, navigation, information architecture, interaction, and behavior.”
  • Showcase your ability to lead and align teams on visual quality standards.
    — “Hold the visual quality bar across work you don't own, and align teams around it.”
  • Emphasize your portfolio's focus on shipped product surfaces with high visual quality.
    — “Your portfolio demonstrates shipped product surfaces with exceptional visual quality.”
  • Demonstrate how your work has improved complex, data-dense experiences through visual design.
    — “Use visual language to clarify complex, data-dense experiences — hierarchy, density, and attention.”
  • Show your ability to prototype and refine new patterns for scalable implementation.
    — “Prototype, test, and refine new patterns before they become systemized.”
Pace · SteadyCollaboration · HighAutonomy · HighDecision Impact · CompanyLevel · Senior

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

  • co-developing Datadog’s next visual direction
  • translating visual principles into concrete product decisions
  • holding visual quality bar across work
Typical background
product designvisual designproduct systems thinking

Skills & requirements

Required

Product DesignVisual DesignProduct Systems ThinkingVisual JudgmentProduct And Systems Thinking

Preferred

PythonSQL

Stack & domain

LeadershipCommunicationProduct DesignVisual Design

About the role

Original posting from Datadog

Datadog is entering a new chapter in how our product looks, feels, and operates. Our Design Lab is defining a new visual direction for the platform, and we’re looking for a Senior Staff Visual Product Designer to help turn that direction into a coherent product experience.

Datadog is dense, technical, and used by people working through complex problems—often under real pressure. The challenge is not simply applying a new aesthetic. It is rethinking hierarchy, layout, navigation, interaction, and product patterns so the experience becomes clearer, more cohesive, and more expressive without losing the power our users rely on.

This is a hands-on product design leadership role for someone who combines strong visual judgment with deep product and systems thinking. You’ll work alongside visual designers, motion designers, product designers, Design Systems, and Engineering to ensure the new direction changes how Datadog works—not just how it looks.

What You'll Do

Co-develop Datadog’s next visual direction by applying and stress-testing it across representative product journeys.

Translate visual principles into concrete decisions about hierarchy, layout, navigation, information architecture, interaction, and behavior.

Use visual language to clarify complex, data-dense experiences — hierarchy, density, and attention.

Hold the visual quality bar across work you don't own, and align teams around it.

Prototype, test, and refine new patterns before they become systemized.

Partner deeply with Product Design, Design Systems, and engineering to turn successful concepts into durable system guidance and implementation.

Create clear artifacts, pilots, and narratives that help teams adopt the direction and raise the product quality bar.

Influence stakeholders across design, engineering, product, and executive partners.

You will report directly to the Design Director and work as part of a small, focused team defining the future state before it scales across hundreds of designers and engineers.

Who You Are

You have 12+ years of experience in product and/or visual design.

Your craft is elevated, and you can execute it yourself at a high bar.

You're product-native. You understand how visual design and product design act on each other in practice.

You use visual language to clarify an experience, and you can say why a decision improves it.

You think in information architecture, hierarchy, and holistic system work.

You've taken a concept and turned it into patterns that scaled across a real product.

You're comfortable operating in ambiguity and in large, complex organizations.

Your portfolio demonstrates shipped product surfaces with exceptional visual quality.

You are a persuasive collaborator who can make recommendations and align designers, engineers, product partners, and executives.

Why This Role Matters

DRUIDS powers every Datadog experience. The decisions made in this role will shape how millions of interactions feel across web, mobile, and emerging AI-driven surfaces. This is an opportunity to bring a new visual direction into a complex, engineering-forward platform and raise the craft bar across the organization.

About Datadog

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.

Datadog offers a competitive salary and equity package, and may include variable compensation. Actual compensation is based on factors such as the candidate's skills, qualifications, and experience. In addition, Datadog offers a wide range of best in class, comprehensive and inclusive employee benefits for this role including healthcare, dental, parental planning, and mental health benefits, a 401(k) plan and match, paid time off, fitness reimbursements, and a discounted employee stock purchase plan.

The reasonably estimated yearly salary for this role at Datadog is:$204,000—$255,000 USD

About Datadog: 

Datadog is the leading observability and security platform for the AI era, providing businesses with unified visibility across the technology stack to manage complexity at scale. It brings applications, infrastructure, data, models, and security into one place, using AI to detect and resolve issues before they impact customers. Trusted globally by Fortune 500 companies and high-growth AI leaders, Datadog enables businesses to move faster with clarity and confidence. Learn more about #DatadogLife on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Datadog Learning Center.

Equal Opportunity at Datadog:

Datadog 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 other characteristics protected by law. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. Here are our Candidate Legal Notices for your reference. 

Datadog endeavors to make our Careers Page accessible to all users. If you would like to contact us regarding the accessibility of our website or need assistance completing the application process, please complete this form. This form is for accommodation requests only and cannot be used to inquire about the status of applications. 

Privacy and AI Guidelines:

Any information you submit to Datadog as part of your application will be processed in accordance with Datadog’s Applicant and Candidate Privacy Notice. For information on our AI policy, please visit Interviewing at Datadog AI Guidelines.

Source: Datadog careers

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