Staff Forward Deployed Engineer, Feature Flags

About this role

As a Forward Deployed Engineer on the Feature Flags team, you'll partner directly with customers to accelerate their feature flag implementations — from initial architecture consulting through prototype builds to full-scale migrations. This role is for someone who wants to write code with customers, not just advise them. You'll work hands-on inside customer codebases to unblock complex, high-stakes deployments, directly influencing deal velocity and customer success. Working closely with Sales, Solutions, and Engineering, you'll be the technical force that turns a signed contract into a live, adopted implementation.

What You'll Do:

• Serve as the hands-on technical partner for strategic customers implementing Datadog Feature Flags, from pre-sales technical validation through post-sales delivery

• Consult on flag architecture and implementation approach for complex environments — multi-service, multi-platform, high-scale deployments

• Build prototype flag implementations directly in customer codebases to prove value and de-risk technical decisions early in the sales cycle

• Implement flags across diverse and advanced deployment modes (server-side, client-side, edge, mobile, streaming/real-time) tailored to each customer's stack

• Drive full flag migrations to completion — including legacy system cutover — efficiently and with minimal customer engineering burden

• Identify patterns across customer implementations and feed them back to Product and Engineering to improve the core product and reduce future implementation time

• Collaborate closely with Engineering on technical edge cases, product gaps, and implementation tooling

• Partner with Sales and Solutions to accelerate deal cycles by removing technical risk and uncertainty

Who You Are:

• 5 years of professional software engineering experience, with hands-on coding ability across the stack you're deployed into

• Experience with feature flagging, experimentation, or config management systems (internal or vendor)

• Comfortable dropping into unfamiliar codebases, languages, and frameworks quickly — no specific stack required, but strong fundamentals and fast ramp-up

• Experience shipping production code, not just prototypes — you understand the difference between a demo and something that survives a migration

• Customer-facing experience, or strong motivation to build it — comfortable being in the room with customer engineers, understanding their constraints, and adapting your approach

• Skilled at simplifying complex technical tradeoffs for both engineering and non-engineering stakeholders

• Motivated by outcomes — deal velocity, successful migrations, and customer trust — not just elegant code

• Comfortable operating with ambiguity, moving between architecture conversations and hands-on implementation in the same week

Bonus Points:

• Experience in a forward-deployed, consulting, or professional services engineering role

• Exposure to large-scale system migrations

• Prior work in a startup or fast-scaling environment where you had to own ambiguous problems end-to-end

About the Team

This team built Eppo — the market-leading experimentation and feature flagging platform trusted by companies like Coinbase, Perplexity, and DraftKings — and joined Datadog through its acquisition. Feature Flags sits at the center of that suite that includes experimentation, product analytics, session replay, RUM, and synthetics. As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you'll work directly inside customer codebases to make that loop real — turning flag architecture decisions into shipped, adopted implementations, and helping our most strategic customers build flag-driven development as a core engineering capability.

Working Model:

This role is based in New York City and works closely with Engineering on a regular basis.

Benefits and Growth:

• Generous and competitive benefits package

• New hire stock equity (RSUs) and employee stock purchase plan

• Continuous career development and pathing opportunities

• Employee-focused best in class onboarding

• Internal mentor and cross-departmental buddy program

• Friendly and inclusive workplace culture

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

#LI-HYBRID 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: $244,000 — $305,000 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 Ca

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