Developer Engagement Lead - Developer Channels & AI

Datadog is the leading observability and security platform for the AI era, providing businesses with unified visibility across their entire technology stack to manage complexity at scale.

Note: This is not a traditional social media or community management position—it is an operational developer growth role embedded directly within Datadog's Product organization.

Developers are continuously discussing Datadog, observability, cloud infrastructure, and security across online spaces—including Reddit, Discord, Hacker News, GitHub, X, LinkedIn, Stack Overflow, and YouTube. As Developer Engagement Lead, your core objective will be to construct the operational systems, monitoring workflows, automation tooling, and triage playbooks that allow Datadog to listen, respond, and participate across developer channels at global scale. You will own our official developer social handles (@datadogdevs on X and Datadog Developers on LinkedIn), establish brand presence in new developer hubs, pull internal technical experts into relevant discussions, and funnel field insights directly back to Product and Engineering teams.

Key Responsibilities

• Developer Listening & Monitoring Infrastructure: Architect automated tooling, monitoring dashboards, and APIs to listen to real-time developer conversations about Datadog, competitors, and cloud observability across Reddit, Hacker News, Discord, GitHub, X, LinkedIn, Stack Overflow, and YouTube.
• Triage, Escalation & Workflow Systems: Build scalable routing mechanisms to evaluate incoming conversations, establish company response playbooks, and seamlessly route technical questions or feedback to the appropriate internal Engineer, PM, DevRel advocate, or Support specialist.
• Developer Social Channel Ownership: Manage and run official developer channels (@datadogdevs on X, Datadog Developers on LinkedIn)—driving publishing schedules, experimentations, engagement tactics, and direct replies.
• Community Expansion Strategy: Establish, launch, and operate new owned or unowned community footprints—such as launching a Discord server, expanding Reddit participation strategies, or creating structured engagement guidelines for Hacker News and GitHub.
• Internal Expert Mobilization: Enable internal Datadog engineers, product managers, and researchers to participate directly in developer conversations under their own credentials rather than relying exclusively on corporate brand accounts.
• Product Feedback Loops: Aggregate recurring developer pain points, objections, product requests, and competitive intelligence into structured feedback loops for Product, Engineering, and Developer Growth leadership.
• Product Release Amplification: Translate changelogs, new product releases, technical demos, open-source projects, and engineering blogs into compelling, native discussions where developers already hang out.
• Metrics & Growth Experimentation: Define and track quantitative success metrics beyond impressions (e.g., response coverage, sentiment shifts, participation rates, website traffic, trial signups, product discovery). Run rapid engagement experiments and document outcomes.

Requirements

Growth, Systems & Technical Audience Depth

• Proven Growth & Engagement Track Record: Demonstrated experience building an audience, developer program, community engagement system, or audience development function with clear business outcomes.
• Systems & Automation Mindset: Ability to replace manual processes with automated monitoring, APIs, LLM/AI workflows, and structured triage playbooks.
• Technical & Tooling Literacy: Comfortable working with monitoring platforms, APIs, automation tools, lightweight scripts, and developer infrastructure products.
• Judgment & Escalation Management: High-judgment decision-making around when a brand should participate in technical online discussions, when to tag an internal expert, and when to listen silently.
• Cross-Functional Communication: Proven ability to build credibility with engineers and product managers, earning their voluntary participation in external discussions.
• Domain & Platform Understanding: Deep familiarity with developer culture and platform nuances across Reddit, Discord, Hacker News, GitHub, Stack Overflow, X, and LinkedIn.

Preferred Qualifications

• Direct experience launching or moderating an enterprise developer Discord server or sub-Reddit community.
• Background working in Developer Growth, Product Management, Developer Marketing, Audience Development, or Technical Communications.
• Hands-on familiarity with cloud-native infrastructure, observability, APM, log management, AI models, or open-source software.
• Experience utilizing generative AI models or automated webhooks to scale social listening and sentiment analysis.
• Existing personal presence or active participation in technical developer communities.
• Track record of creating short-form technical video or visual content.

Total Rewards & Benefits

• Compensation & Equity: Base salary range of $139,000 – $164,000 USD + variable compensation + Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) + Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) discount.
• Healthcare & Family Support: Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage, parental planning support, and mental health resources.
• Financial & Retirement: 401(k) plan with company match, fitness reimbursements, and paid time off.
• Growth & Culture: Product-embedded growth environment, continuous learning stipends, internal mentor programs, and active Community Guilds.