Manager I, Applied AI

Manager I, Applied AI at Datadog.

About the role

This role sits within the Applied AI team, which focuses on transforming research from the Datadog AI Research lab into production-ready features like Bits Chat and updog.

Key Facts

• Location: Paris, France
• Engagement: Hybrid
• Team: Applied AI - Distilled Models

What You'll Do

• Lead a team of engineers and applied scientists focused on cost-efficient specialized models and AI security.
• Collaborate with product managers and research teams to define success criteria and guide projects from initial concept to full adoption.
• Manage end-to-end delivery of AI systems, ensuring production-grade reliability and operational excellence.
• Balance quality, latency, cost, and safety while building offline and online evaluation pipelines to measure performance and detect model drift.
• Support team growth through coaching, feedback, and hiring while fostering a culture of innovation.
• Share knowledge and contribute to cross-team collaboration across the broader AI organization.

Requirements

• People management experience with a focus on mentoring and developing engineering talent.
• Technical expertise in AI or machine learning, including areas such as large language models, RAG, semantic search, agentic systems, deep learning, or NLP.
• Experience with AI evaluation methodologies, including both offline benchmarks and online metrics.
• Strong product instinct with the ability to anchor technical work in customer problems and define clear success criteria.
• BS, MS, or PhD in Machine Learning, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.

Nice to Have

• Experience taking AI products from 0 to 1, including scoping hypotheses and making deliberate decisions on project direction.

Skills & Tools

• Large language models
• Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)
• Semantic search
• Agentic systems
• Deep learning
• NLP
• Offline and online evaluation pipelines

Practical Notes

• Datadog operates as a hybrid workplace to support work-life harmony.
• Requisition ID: R19728.

Datadog provides equal employment opportunities to all applicants.

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