Senior Windows Kernel Engineer

The USM team is developing a zero-instrumentation observability solution that automatically discovers services running on each host. It supports both plaintext and TLS-encrypted traffic, classifies Layer 7 protocols, decodes service-level communication, and reports RED metrics (requests, errors, duration). By leveraging low-level user and kernel APIs, the team captures comprehensive signals from the system. Beyond networking, they tackle complex challenges such as protocol versioning, TLS detection across varied languages and runtimes, and ensuring robust performance in production environments.

We're looking for a senior engineer with strong systems-level thinking and deep familiarity with Windows. You should be comfortable working close to the kernel - ideally with experience in kernel development, or a strong desire to get there. Proficiency in C/C++ is essential; experience with Go is a plus. A solid understanding of networking protocols and TLS internals is highly valuable.

You'll join a high-impact team tackling ambitious technical challenges - like decoding traffic across multiple protocols, and ensuring high-fidelity metrics in complex, real-world environments. You'll be expected to lead design and implementation efforts, contribute to roadmap planning, and collaborate across teams to ensure our solution remains robust, scalable, and frictionless for our users

This role is a great fit for engineers who thrive on low-level, performance-sensitive problems, and want to shape the future of observability through cutting-edge kernel technology.

At Datadog, we place value in our office culture - the relationships that it builds, the creativity it brings to the table, and the collaboration of being together. We operate as a hybrid workplace to ensure our employees can create a work-life harmony that best fits them.
What You'll Do:

• Own new feature development end-to-end from ideation to implementation
• Build low-overhead data collection tools based on Windows kernel drivers that collect important metrics from the kernel and in particular the network stack
• Develop systems to auto-discover services, classify L7 protocols, and extract RED metrics from both plaintext and TLS traffic
• Solve complex challenges around protocol parsing, encryption handling, and performance at the kernel level
• Collaborate across teams to drive technical direction, improve reliability, and scale the system for production use

Who You Are:

• You have in depth knowledge with C/C++ and Windows OS kernel development
• You have strong low-level Windows OS internals knowledge
• You have experience working with and developing in the Windows operating system, developing and troubleshooting kernel drivers (using WFP, Win 32 APIs, DDK, …)
• You have a deep understanding of the various layers of the network protocol stack and have hands-on experience troubleshooting networking or API related issues
• You have significant experience building high throughput/low latency systems
• You are motivated by solving problems for our customers first and foremost and building beautiful products that our customers love

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.
About Datadog:
Datadog (NASDAQ: DDOG) is a global SaaS business, delivering a rare combination of growth and profitability. We are on a mission to break down silos and solve complexity in the cloud age by enabling digital transformation, cloud migration, and infrastructure monitoring of our customers' entire technology stacks. Built by engineers, for engineers, Datadog is used by organizations of all sizes across a wide range of industries. Together, we champion professional development, diversity of thought, innovation, and work excellence to empower continuous growth. Join the pack and become part of a collaborative, pragmatic, and thoughtful people-first community where we solve tough problems, take smart risks, and celebrate one another. 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.

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