Process
Everything started with a recruiter phone screen.
After the recruiter phone screen came a tech phone screen where they asked a fairly easy question, then moved onto a more difficult one. After the tech phone screen was a 3-hour take-home assignment.
After the first tech screen, I was impressed by their process, as I was informed of the full, verbatim feedback from the interviewer. This was actually extremely helpful and neat.
The problem came after the take-home assignment. I spent the full time on the take-home assignment, where they mentioned something along the lines of, "We go through the submission and read everything you put in there!" only to be ghosted afterwards. This experience went from great to horrible.
It was fairly unprofessional for a recruiter to get you to spend time interviewing, then not have the courtesy to even follow up if things didn't go well.
Questions
General algorithms.
Tech phone screen: one easy problem, then onto a harder problem.
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Interview Statistics
The following metrics were computed from 86 interview experiences for the Datadog Software Engineer role in United States.
Success Rate
Datadog's interview process for their Software Engineer roles in the United States is very selective, failing most engineers who go through it.
Experience Rating
Candidates reported having mixed feelings for Datadog's Software Engineer interview process in United States.
Datadog Work Experiences
- 5.0Great Tech, Annoying Stand-upsSoftware Engineer • Former EmployeeJanuary 25, 2023Pros: People, cool office, up-to-date tech.Cons: Stand up and Jira were annoying.
- 3.0Growing Fast and Losing the MagicSoftware Engineer • Current EmployeeJanuary 14, 2025Pros: Good culture around taking responsibility for your work, while having a no-blame attitude for major problems, like "incidents". If you can find the right team that matches what you want, you'll thrive. Otherwise, you may struggle with bureaucracy.Cons: Comp reviews are done without any input from the employee. Performance reviews, decoupled from compensation, don't feel impactful. On a scale from 1-5 where 5 is beyond expectations, 5 isn't actually an option because the higher-ups don't want those to be given out. In fact, a lot of decisions from higher-ups impact the culture negatively. They make decisions that are better handled by team leads and managers (people regular employees actually work with, talk to, and know). The theme of management is having a lax policy, then slowly killing it without clarity or communication. Promotions also happen without employee input. Hybrid policy, which used to be unclear, is now mandated from above and tracked by badge swipes. "Unlimited" PTO is not so anymore. In the US, it is tracked to be no more than some "average" they got of 15-25 days, up to manager discretion, but after 25, they're told to decline additional. KPIs are made just to satisfy executives that don't have the best context for the teams that have to write them. Almost a third of the team I'm on are managers of some sort.
- 5.0Great culture and teamSoftware Engineer • Current EmployeeNew York, NYFebruary 4, 2026Pros: A lot of ownership across various projectsCons: Wish that we had free breakfast and dinner.
Datadog Interview Questions
