I contacted one of their recruiters through a referral. The process was two months long, but only because I had to pause it due to personal reasons. I do have to hand it to them; they waited for me for almost three weeks.

I had one initial tech screen interview, with a couple of easy coding exercises and some questions about my past experience.

The next round consisted of four different sessions:

• Two coding sessions
• One architectural design session
• One session with the hiring manager

Even though I will be working from Madrid, the interviewers were all either French or from the US, and I will be part of a distributed team.

It's true that Datadog has implemented a hybrid model in the Madrid office, and I am coming from a fully remote job (due to Covid), so it's something to consider.

All in all, it's been a great experience.

Coding exercises are pretty straightforward and not very complicated. The recruiter will provide hints on how to prepare them.

The key to success is to provide a working solution and communicate at all times with the interviewer. I don't think they require you to come up with the best implementation, but with something that works and can be improved.

The design question was about a distributed system with a specific functionality. Again, speak out loud your thoughts and be thorough with the API design. Be prepared to respond about corner-case situations (errors, failures, etc).

Don't have to design a very resilient system from scratch; try to iterate.

The hiring manager one is about a deep-dive in one of your past projects. Take into account that they will want to see your contribution and impact. Demonstrate your leadership and initiative.