Senior Staff Product Designer, Design Lab
Datadog is hiring a Senior Staff Product Designer, Design Lab in New York, United States. It pays $204k-$255k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Datadog.
Level's read on this job
- Level rates this role Little AI ●○○○: aI is not part of the work.
- Tools and skills the posting cites include Figma, product design and visual design.
- Level classifies it as a lead role.
- Level lists 433 other open roles at Datadog.
AI in this role
Define the next visual direction and product patterns for Datadog's complex enterprise platform.
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 USDAbout 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.
How we rate this
Senior Staff Product Designer, Design Lab at Datadog rates 0 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Little AI (AI Level 1 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Little AI. AI is not part of the work.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Questions you could be asked
- Tell me about a project where product design was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where visual design was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where design systems was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where information architecture was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where prototyping was part of your work. What did you do?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: Product Design, Visual Design, Design Systems, Information Architecture, and Prototyping. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
Want an expert to read your CV for this job?
Free. Send your CV and the role you want next. We reply by email within 2 to 4 business days.
Get new design jobs by email
One email a week with the new design jobs, each rated for how much AI is in the work. No recruiter spam, unsubscribe in one click.
Free. One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click.
Similar roles
Design roles that involve little AI, at other companies.
What kind of AI work fits you?
Answer 12 practical questions in about three minutes. Get a simple profile, the work it points to, and live roles to explore next.
Find my next step