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Staff Research Scientist - Foundation & World Models

DatadogNew York, New York, USA; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USADev Eng
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Salary
$320K — $400K USD
Job type
Full-time
Experience
Senior
Posted
7 Oct 2026
Status
Open · checked 7d ago

About this role

Staff Research Scientist - Foundation & World Models is a full-time individual contributor position at Datadog located in New York, New York or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This role suits an experienced researcher who wants to lead foundational AI initiatives and collaborate across engineering teams.

Role Overview

Datadog seeks a hands-on individual contributor to join the Datadog AI Research team. The professional in this position will spearhead research initiatives focused on foundation models and world models. The role involves managing entire research lifecycles and working alongside product and engineering groups to turn investigative findings into production-ready platform capabilities.

Key Responsibilities

Shape and guide technical directions for research programs concentrating on multimodal learning, world models, and foundation models.
Handle research problems from initial question formulation through experimentation, model creation, and evaluation.
Train large-scale multimodal models utilizing telemetry data like logs, traces, metrics, topology, and events.
Advance pre-training, scaling, representation learning, and evaluation techniques for systems modeling complex distributed environments.
Elevate the technical standards of the group by mentoring engineers and researchers, reviewing methods, and setting experimental benchmarks.
Partner with product and engineering departments to integrate research breakthroughs into platform capabilities.
Share findings through research publications, presentations at conferences such as ICML, NeurIPS, and ICLR, and open-source model artifacts.

Requirements

Possess a PhD in Machine Learning, Computer Science, or a related discipline, or have equivalent practical background.
Demonstrate deep expertise in generative modeling, multimodal learning, foundation models, or world models.
Bring hands-on experience designing, training, and evaluating large deep learning architectures at scale.
Show a history of impactful research through publications, significant model contributions, or widely adopted research tools.
Guide technical initiatives through influence, with a history of mentoring technical peers.
Communicate intricate technical concepts clearly to varied audiences while remaining dedicated to hands-on research.

Skills and Tools

Foundation Models
World Models
Multimodal Learning
Generative Modeling
Large Language Models
Distributed Systems Telemetry Analysis

Salary and Benefits

The estimated yearly salary ranges from $320,000 to $400,000 USD, supplemented by a competitive equity package and possible variable compensation. Employee benefits include healthcare, dental coverage, mental health services, parental planning, a 401(k) plan with matching, paid time off, fitness reimbursements, and a discounted employee stock purchase plan.

About the Company

Datadog operates as a global SaaS organization providing a security and observability platform designed for cloud environments. Built by engineers for engineers, the company helps organizations manage infrastructure, metrics, logs, applications, and security models in a unified platform.

How to Apply

Interested candidates should submit their application through the official Datadog careers page.

Skills and tech stack

Foundation ModelsWorld ModelsMultimodal ModelsLarge Language ModelsDeep LearningMachine LearningDistributed Systems

Questions candidates ask

What is the salary range for this position?

The estimated yearly salary is between $320,000 and $400,000 USD, with potential for equity and variable compensation.

Where is the job located?

The role is located in New York, New York, or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.

What educational background is required?

Candidates must hold a PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field, or possess equivalent experience.

What benefits are included?

Benefits include healthcare, dental, parental planning, mental health services, a 401(k) plan with match, paid time off, fitness reimbursements, and a discounted employee stock purchase plan.

Where should applicants apply?

Applicants should apply directly on the official Datadog careers page.

Ready to apply?

The application is on the official Datadog careers page.

Apply on company site