i have a Datadog loop coming up for a senior data engineer role and i'm trying to build a realistic picture of what to expect. everything i'm finding online is either 2+ years old or very vague.
if you've interviewed at Datadog in the last 6-12 months, for any role, would love to hear: how many rounds total roughly what each round covered how long between stages anything that surprised you
don't need the whole story, even just a bullet list helps. trying to calibrate difficulty and focus my prep.
4 replies
backend_bekah
swe mid-level, last summer. 5 rounds: recruiter call, 1 coding phone screen (45 min, 2 medium problems), then 4-round virtual onsite: 1 more coding, 1 system design, 1 behavioral, 1 domain-specific (distributed systems deep dive for me). total elapsed time was about 4.5 weeks.
ds_dmitri
ds role, Q4 last year. the data rounds at Datadog are heavy on sql and metric interpretation. they gave me a dataset and asked me to identify anomalies and suggest what monitoring rules to write. very product-relevant, not abstract stats. 4 rounds total, offer in ~3 weeks.
de_derek
this is exactly what i needed. the domain-specificity makes sense given what they do. i'll make sure i can talk about cardinality issues and pipeline backpressure. thanks both.
staff_steph
staff eng loop was 6 rounds total and included a "leadership and influence" round that was essentially a behavioral round but framed around a technical decision you had to sell without authority. bring a real story where you changed direction cross-functionally.