About this role
Datadog is entering a new chapter in how our product looks, feels and operates. We're building a small, high-leverage Design Lab team to define that evolution, and we're looking for a Senior Staff Visual Designer to author it.
Our design system powers everything we ship. Now we're ready to evolve it. As Datadog expands into AI-driven experiences and more complex product surfaces, the visual language needs to grow with it. This is the role that decides what that language is — someone with taste, judgment, and the confidence to set a direction and defend it.
At Datadog, we place value in our office culture - the relationships and collaboration it builds and the creativity it brings to the table. We operate as a hybrid workplace to ensure our Datadogs can create a work-life harmony that best fits them.
What You'll Do
• Define and evolve Datadog’s visual language across product surfaces.
• Lead exploratory and concept work, creating a range of distinct visual directions for the next generation of the product.
• Synthesize product context, research, references, and stakeholder input into clear visual principles and a coherent point of view.
• Establish the quality bar for typography, color, composition, iconography, imagery, motion, and visual expression across the platform.
• Create high-fidelity product exemplars and prototypes that make an emerging direction tangible.
• Partner deeply with Brand, Product Design, Motion, and Design Systems to test and refine the direction across different surfaces.
• Influence executives and senior stakeholders through clear, persuasive visual storytelling.
• Guide and critique the work of other designers, helping the visual direction remain coherent as it evolves.
• Help shape how visual exploration, critique, and craft are integrated into Datadog’s design process.
You will report directly to the Design Director and work as part of a small, focused team defining the future state before it scales across hundreds of designers and engineers.
Who You Are
• You have 12+ years of experience in visual, brand, graphic and/or product design.
• You have strong taste and are comfortable defending a point of view on judgment alone.
• You can develop several different directions, synthesize the strongest ideas, and explain why one should move forward.
• Your craft is top-shelf and know how to create the thing in your head.
• You understand how typography, color, composition, imagery, iconography, and motion work together to create a coherent visual language.
• You can move a room, executives included, with a story and a compelling artifact.
• You're comfortable operating in ambiguity and defining direction where none exists.
• Your portfolio demonstrates exceptional visual craft and authorship, not just applied systems work.
Brand and agency backgrounds are welcome here. You do not need to come from a traditional product-design path, but you should understand how visual i