Requirements & tools
Datadog
The Engineering Manager, Data Visualization Explorations at Datadog leads a small team of frontend and visualization engineers building end-to-end data viz experiences for Datadog’s observability engineer customers. Responsibilities include working with Product Management and Design to plan and staff visualization projects; coaching and developing engineers across various levels; ensuring strong cross-team communication around project management, code review, and architecture patterns; proactively anticipating cross-team dependencies and identifying opportunities to reuse features across dashboards, notebooks, and product pages; deeply understanding the needs of Datadog’s customers (observability engineers using the platform daily) by participating in customer conversations and reviewing product briefs; and defining/maintaining high standards for operations practices including bug triage, incident response, and performance telemetry analysis. Required: at least 2 years of people management experience in software engineering; strong TypeScript/JavaScript skills with frontend framework fluency (React); excellent communication skills for delivering actionable feedback; passionate about data visualization and intuitive UI design; demonstrated ownership over team work. Bonus: active in data viz or software engineering community through talks, blogs, or open source. Compensation: $187,000-$260,000 base plus equity (RSUs), ESPP, generous benefits. Hybrid 3-day-per-week NYC schedule.
Role context
Engineering Managers leading data visualization teams at observability platforms shape how millions of observability engineers experience and interpret telemetry data. At Datadog, this role leads the Data Visualizations Explorations team within the Graphing organization — setting product direction, coaching engineers, and driving projects that build end-to-end experiences for Datadog’s core users (other observability engineers). The team extends core widgets like Hostmap and Geomap Visualizations and explores innovative ways to leverage Datadog data sources. The role requires strong TypeScript/JavaScript skills, frontend framework fluency (React), and at least two years of people management experience. Hybrid schedule at the NYC office.
Quick facts
Frequently Asked Questions
How does this EM role differ from a typical Frontend EM at a SaaS company?
Standard Frontend EM roles often focus on consumer-facing UX (dashboards, signup flows, marketing pages). Data Visualization EM roles at observability platforms work on heavily technical, data-dense interfaces consumed by other engineers. The technical complexity is higher (rendering performance for millions of data points, building intuitive interfaces for complex distributed systems data), and the customer empathy required is different — your users are technical engineers debugging production incidents.
Does this role require deep observability domain knowledge?
Not on day one — but expect to build it quickly. Datadog's customers are observability engineers (SREs, platform engineers, on-call rotations), and the team's work directly impacts how they monitor production systems. EMs who came from observability or SRE backgrounds ramp faster, but strong product-engineering managers can build the domain knowledge in their first 3-6 months through customer conversations.
What is the team size and structure under this Engineering Manager?
Data Visualization Explorations typically runs as a team of 4-7 engineers (mix of senior ICs and mid-level). The EM reports into a director within the Graphing organization. The team partners closely with adjacent Visualization platform teams (Dashboards, Notebooks) and shared Frontend Platform groups. Engineers split roughly between deep widget development (Hostmap, Geomap) and exploration work prototyping new visualization patterns.