Founding Engineer

Datadog

The Datadog for Startups (DDFS) program helps the next generation of fast-scaling companies adopt best-in-class observability and security from day one. We're looking for the technical engine of this program - someone who can sit across from a startup CTO, earn credibility in the first five minutes, and help them see how Datadog fits into their stack before they've even finished describing it. You'll be the first technical member on a lean, five-person team, owning the technical motion end-to-end: discovery calls, demos, startup enablement, forward-deployed engineering projects, and representing Datadog at founder events across San Francisco. This isn't a traditional SE seat - it's part solutions architect, part technical consultant, part startup evangelist, and it requires someone adaptable, proactive, and ready to take initiative without being told what to do next. 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: * Run discovery calls with startup CTOs and engineering leads to identify quick wins, validate technical needs, and position Datadog against alternatives like Grafana, New Relic, Sentry, and Clickhouse * Deliver tailored Datadog demos and help startups get instrumented quickly - removing friction, showcasing value, and ensuring smooth technical onboarding, particularly around AI/ML observability, infrastructure scaling, and security * Build automation to improve internal team workflows - EX: outreach, reporting, the application process, and website updates * Represent Datadog for Startups at accelerator demo days, hackathons, conferences, founder dinners, and workshops across San Francisco * Build relationships across SF's startup ecosystem - founders, VCs, accelerator partners, and technical communities - and develop thought leadership content for technical founder audiences Who You Are: * 5-7+ years in solutions architecture, pre-sales engineering, technical consulting, or a similar customer-facing technical role at a SaaS or cloud company, with broad fluency across cloud infrastructure, containers, Kubernetes, CI/CD, and modern application frameworks * A tinkerer with genuine, personal interest in AI and emerging technologies - you've used tools like Claude, ChatGPT, Codex, or Cursor outside of work and follow what's happening with agentic workflows, vibe coding, and codegen because you find it interesting * Consultative mindset - you do the overview first, then go deep. You identify customer needs and quick wins in a first conversation, not just recite product features * Strong presence and communication skills - you can command a room of technical founders, run a compelling demo, and hold your own in an unscripted conversation with a CTO * Adaptable and flexible - comfortable shifting between contexts, priorities, and audiences quickly, and thrive in ambiguity on a small, lean team * Based in San Francisco and actively engaged in the local tech/startup community, with startup experience (founded a company, early-stage engineer, or consulting/advisory to founders) strongly preferred Datadog values people from all walks of life. We understand not everyone will meet all the above qualifications on day one. That's okay. If you're passionate about technology and want to grow your skills, we encourage you to apply. Benefits and Growth: * New hire stock equity (RSUs) and employee stock purchase plan (ESPP) * Continuous professional development, product training, and career pathing * Intradepartmental mentor and buddy program for in-house networking * An inclusive company culture, ability to join our Community Guilds (Datadog Affinity Slacks) * Access to Inclusion Talks with a focus on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion * Free, global mental health benefits for employees and dependents age 6+ * Competitive global benefits Benefits and Growth listed above may vary based on the country of your employment and the nature of your employment with Datadog. Datadog offers a competitive salary and equity package, and may include variable compensation. Actual compensation is based on factors such as the candidate's skills, qualifications, and experience. In addition, Datadog offers a wide range of best in class, comprehensive and inclusive employee benefits for this role including healthcare, dental, parental planning, and mental health benefits, a 401(k) plan and match, paid time off, fitness reimbursements, and a discounted employee stock purchase plan. The reasonably estimated yearly salary for this role at Datadog is: $192,000—$240,000 USD ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About Datadog:  Datadog is the leading observability and security platform for the AI era, providing businesses with unified visibility across the technology stack to manage complexity at scale. It brings applications, infrastructure, data, models, and security into one place, using AI to detect and resolve issues before they impact customers. Trusted globally by Fortune 500 companies and high-growth AI leaders, Datadog enables businesses to move faster with clarity and confidence. Learn more about #DatadogLife on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Datadog Learning Center. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Equal Opportunity at Datadog: Datadog is proud to offer equal employment opportunity to everyone regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, veteran status, and other characteristics protected by law. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. Here are our Candidate Legal Notices for your reference.  Datadog endeavors to make our Careers Page accessible to all users. If you would like to contact us regarding the accessibility of our website or need assistance completing the application process, please complete this form. This form is for accommodation requests only and cannot be used to inquire about the status of applications.  Privacy and AI Guidelines: Any information you submit to Datadog as part of your application will be processed in accordance with Datadog’s Applicant and Candidate Privacy Notice. For information on our AI policy, please visit Interviewing at Datadog AI Guidelines.

Meticulous

WHAT WE DO We're building the last piece of the puzzle to help companies unlock AI code generation - the part that makes it actually safe to ship. AI is enabling engineers to write code faster than ever before. But software review and testing hasn't caught up. Engineering leaders are drowning in long review cycles and more bugs than ever. The bottleneck isn't writing code anymore - it's everything that comes after it. We spent 3 years building the foundational technology to crack this - hard to replicate, and several years ahead of anything else on the market. Since then, we've grown 5x year-on-year and now work with some of the most AI-driven engineering teams in the world: Notion, ElevenLabs, Dropbox, Discord, LaunchDarkly, Wiz, CoreWeave, Wealthsimple, and more. Companies like Dropbox, Wiz, and Notion often pay more for Meticulous than any other software product in their stack, and spontaneously refer us to others. We're backed by the same investors behind Twilio, Twitch, Intercom, and PagerDuty. Individual investors include the founders of Vercel, Datadog, Segment, and Dropbox, the CTO of GitHub, the CPO of Adobe, the head of Engineering at Cursor, and many more. Our mission is to radically accelerate the pace of software development by empowering every engineer to ship at the speed their agents write code. This is an opportunity to join a company in hypergrowth as we scale from millions of annual recurring revenue to $100M ARR. If this excites you, come help us build it! THE ROLE THE FIRST FORWARD DEPLOYED ENGINEER IN SAN FRANCISCO As Meticulous's first Forward Deployed Engineer in San Francisco, you'll establish our US FDE presence and help define how this function operates from the ground up. The FDE team is still small and the playbook is still being written - you'll be instrumental in shaping the processes, tooling, and best practices that the function runs on as it scales. You'll work directly with engineering leaders at the world's most AI-driven companies, understanding their unique architectures and crafting solutions that work for their specific needs. This role demands an unusual combination of deep technical expertise and entrepreneurial drive, you'll be writing high-performance code one day and presenting architectural decisions to VPs of Engineering the next. CORE RESPONSIBILITIES This role spans both customer work and engineering. You own each customer end-to-end - and do what’s needed to make sure Meticulous is transformational for them. This involves everything from changes to core product to owning the customer relationship: * Architect and deploy at scale: Work with a customer to understand their full architecture, design implementation strategies that fit their systems, and pair with their engineers to deliver them. * Evolve the core product to make the customer successful: This can range from debugging and fixing issues that are blocking the rollout (which often go deep into the core technology, such as the deterministic browser), to shipping features that will be transformative for the customer you’re focused on, but also move the product forward itself e.g. rework parts of Meticulous to work at a new level of scale required by the customer. * Own the technical relationship and lead the pilot: Be the technical lead to engineering leadership (VPs Eng, Staff+ engineers) at each customer - driving scoping, integration, and rollout. A founder or account executive handles pricing and contracts; the two of you operate as a pod per account. * Guide the direction of the product based on what you learn in the field: As you see how the product performs, and how engineers workflows are rapidly evolving, work out what do we need to build to unlock the next level of automating software development? Where there are improvements which make sense to own and ship, ship them; where the work is larger and needs deeper scoping pair with core engineering team to make them happen. * Build the playbook: The FDE function is still being defined. You'll be instrumental in establishing the processes, tooling, and best practices that make each deployment smoother and faster than the last, creating the leverage that lets the team scale. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR * Exceptional engineering skills: Typically 3+ years in a demanding technical role, but we'll consider exceptional candidates with 1+ years of experience. * Highly agentic: you have a bias to action, move fast, take ownership without being asked, and get genuinely frustrated when things stall - this role demands entrepreneurial self-drive * Strong communication skills: You can explain complex technical concepts to both engineers and executives, and you're energized by customer collaboration * Willingness to travel: Approximately 25% travel to customer sites. Expect to spend your first ~2 months in London embedded with the core engineering team. THIS ROLE IS NOT FOR YOU IF… * You want a pure IC engineering role with no customer contact * You need structured handoffs, clear specs, and a defined process to follow * You expect regular hours and no travel - our team, customers, and investors span SF, London, and NYC * You want engineering work that's insulated from customers and their problems YOU MAY LOOK LIKE… * Senior IC at a top tech company ready to leave the bureaucracy behind and own real customer outcomes end-to-end * Ex-founder or technical founding engineer who wants to keep the founder-energy but plug into a company with product-market fit and a clear path to scale * Forward Deployed Engineer at OpenAI, Scale, or Anthropic looking for an earlier-stage version of the same work * Solutions architect or staff engineer who wants more deep engineering and less PowerPoint WHAT YOU'LL GAIN HELP BUILD A NEW FUNCTION As the first FDE in San Francisco and one of the earliest FDEs at Meticulous, you'll be instrumental in defining how this team operates, from processes and tooling to how it scales. Clear path into leadership as the function grows. EXCEPTIONAL GROWTH You grow through a combination of the people you work with, and the experiences you’re exposed to. Within that context: * Our philosophy is that density of talent is what matters; and so we’ve focused on keeping the team small but with exceptional individuals. You’ll get to collaborate with world-class engineers who previously led 100+ person organizations at top companies, and we expect you’ll find the team is beyond any you’ve worked in before, within big tech (Google, Meta, etc.) or otherwise. This, combined with a focus on learning and growing together, means we’re able to learn from each other at rapid pace. * Beyond growing your skills through engineering and collaboration, the role involves spending a lot of time with engineering leaders at the fastest growing tech companies and leading firms in the world. We’ve found this gives us a unique exposure to a huge range of technologies, practices, techniques, codebases, architectures, cultures, learnings - what works, what doesn’t. It’s a valuable bird eye view of collective learnings and experiences. These learnings normally take years or decades to build up as you move between companies. There are few startups that grow as fast as we do. You’ll be joining a small team on an exceptional trajectory. Through this comes unique growth, but also unique network. EXPAND YOUR NETWORK Our investor network is one of the most active in tech - we'll use it to connect you with whoever helps you do your job better. You’ll work with engineering leaders across many leading tech companies, often at the highest levels. Given the speed of growth, and desirability of the product amongst the leading enterprises, Meticulous provides the opportunity to build a network of connections across the full span of the technology world. SOLVE NOVEL PROBLEMS Work on challenges at the intersection of browser technology, testing infrastructure, and large-scale system design that few engineers ever encounter - to help build something that changes the way software is developed. WORLD-CLASS COMPENSATION Base salary $200K-$400K plus significant equity, exceeding compensation at top technology companies and startups. PERKS ♥️ * 🍲 Unlimited food & drinks in office - including daily lunch as a team, and your own Amazon business account to buy whatever snacks you want for the office. * 💻 A setup you’ll love - everyone has a standing desk, brand new Macbook, your choice of ergonomic peripherals, and a $2.5k WFH budget to make home just as good * 🌴 Team offsites - we work and play hard, we’ve done offsites in Italy, Abu Dhabi and local 5-star resorts * 📚 Unlimited book budget - we have a growing in-office library and actively encourage everyone to add to it, whether you want to ramp up your knowledge of software testing, or become a better startup operator! * + many more!   LIFE AT METICULOUS We believe autonomous testing will enable the automation of the majority of software development. You'll be at the forefront of this transformation, working with the companies that will be first to realize this future. This role is on-site because we've found that the speed of iteration and depth of collaboration required for both customer success and technical excellence happens best in person.

Dust

ABOUT DUST Work is being rewritten, and the people holding the pen are the ones who actually run it. With enterprise-grade governance, flexible model choice, and a collaborative interface for humans and agents to work together, Dust empowers AI Operators at the world’s fastest-moving companies to rewire how work gets done. With 70%+ weekly active users, people stick with Dust as much as they do with Slack and Notion. We don't get piloted and shelved. We land once, and spread. We're at an exciting stage of our journey, and growing fast. We're serving great customers like Datadog, 1Password, Cursor, Clay, Vanta and Persona, and aim to x5 our growth by the end of 2026. Dust is backed by Sequoia with a determined team of optimists (coming from Stripe, OpenAI, and Stanford) who like to focus on users, ship fast, and don't take themselves too seriously while doing so. The Generalist named us among the Future 50. TLDR; As our founding Post-Sales Solutions Engineer at Dust, you will act as the technical partner for our existing customers, ensuring they maximize value from our AI operating system throughout their journey with us. Your primary focus will be driving long-term customer success through high-value use cases, deep adoption, and expansion opportunities that make Dust indispensable to customer workflows. You will work closely with our Customer Success and Product & Engineering teams to deepen customer relationships and drive retention.   WHAT YOU'LL DO   HELP BUILD DUST’S POST-SALES SOLUTIONS ENGINEERING FUNCTION FROM THE GROUND UP   * Be instrumental in shaping our global Solutions Engineering organization as one of the first post-sales SE hires in the US * Help define processes, establish best practices, and lay the foundation for how post-sales technical partnership scales at Dust * Develop deep expertise in Dust’s platform capabilities, AI workflows, and prompt engineering best practices to become a trusted internal resource for complex customer scenarios   SERVE AS A STRATEGIC TECHNICAL PARTNER TO CUSTOMERS   * Act as a trusted technical advisor to Enterprise customers, building long-term relationships with both technical and business stakeholders * Lead advanced implementation projects including high-value use cases, technical integrations, and custom AI workflows * Discover customer pain points and help architect scalable agent ecosystems that drive meaningful business outcomes * Push the boundaries of what customers can accomplish with AI agents and proactively deepen adoption over time   DRIVE CUSTOMER ADOPTION, ENABLEMENT, AND EXPANSION   * Partner closely with Customer Success to drive high-value adoption, retention, and expansion across your book of business * Lead workshops, training sessions, and enablement programs that help customers successfully operationalize Dust * Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to technical teams, executives, security stakeholders, and end users * Adapt presentations, demos, and implementation guidance to the needs and technical sophistication of each customer audience   BRIDGE CUSTOMER FEEDBACK WITH PRODUCT EVOLUTION   * Champion customer needs with Product and Engineering teams, translating customer feedback, usage patterns, and operational challenges into actionable product insights * Identify recurring implementation patterns and turn them into reusable frameworks, documentation, and best practices * Advocate for product improvements that drive better customer outcomes and platform scalability * Help shape how AI-native post-sales organizations operate as Dust continues to scale   REQUIREMENTS   Every candidate and employee's success is measured against the same 3 dimensions. Aptitude, Attitude and Agency.   APTITUDE * 4+ years in customer-facing technical roles such as Solutions Engineering, Solutions Architecture, Implementation Engineering, Technical Consulting, or Software Engineering * Strong technical aptitude with the ability to work directly with both engineers and business stakeholders * Familiarity with APIs, web development, integrations, and lightweight scripting or tooling * AI fluency beyond prompting; experience building workflows, automations, or agent-based systems using modern AI tools is highly desirable * Strong discovery and problem-solving skills with the ability to translate ambiguous customer pain points into technical solutions * Excellent communication skills across workshops, training, implementation, and stakeholder management * Strong organizational skills and ability to manage multiple parallel customer initiatives simultaneously   ATTITUDE * Deeply curious and motivated to become an expert in both Dust’s product and the evolving AI landscape * Customer-obsessed with a genuine desire to solve meaningful problems and create long-term value * Highly proactive and resourceful; you don’t wait to be told what needs improvement * Thrives in ambiguity and fast-moving environments where processes and playbooks are still being defined * Collaborative and low ego; you work effectively across Customer Success, Product, Engineering, and GTM teams * High standards and strong execution without needing heavy structure or oversight * Excited by the opportunity to help define a new category and shape how companies operate with AI   AGENCY * Operate with strong ownership and drive customer outcomes end-to-end without needing to be micromanaged * Proactively identify opportunities for account expansion, deeper adoption, and new AI use cases * Push projects forward independently while knowing when to involve cross-functional partners * Identify recurring patterns across customer work and turn them into scalable solutions, documentation, or product opportunities * Advocate for customers with urgency and influence product direction when needed * Continuously improve how you work and support customers to increase leverage and impact   COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS * Competitive compensation: $220,000-280,000 OTE * Support for relocation (up to $10k) * Significant equity package in a Sequoia-backed startup * Health insurance for you and your dependents * New MacBook Pro or Linux machine, monitor, keyboard, etc. * Beautiful office in the heart of San Francisco * Opportunity to travel to Paris multiple times a year * Regular team events and offsite LOCATION We're prioritizing building our team with an in-person culture at our offices in Paris, San Francisco, and New York because we value the magic that happens when talented people work closely together. We have an office-first culture. Some of the best things about building at Dust are the energy, the fast decisions, and the unexpected conversations that unlock a hard problem, which happen because we are in the same room. Being together is not a formality, it is how we do our best work, and it is something we actively protect. That said, we hire people with strong judgement and we extend that trust to how they manage their time. When working from home makes more sense for what you need to get done that day, we trust you to make that call. WHY DUST The models are powerful enough. What's missing is the product layer where AI meets how companies actually work. That's what we're building: the infrastructure that lets any team turn scattered knowledge and tools into coordinated execution with agents they build, own, and run themselves. We use Dust ourselves every day. We get to shape how humans and agents collaborate while solving our own problems with the product we ship. That loop is rare, and it's why we move fast. If you're excited about defining a new category and want to join a determined team of optimists who focus on users, ship fast, and don't take themselves too seriously, we'd love to talk. Even if you don't check every box in our requirements, we encourage you to apply. We value diverse perspectives and backgrounds, and we're more interested in your potential and passion than a perfect match to our checklist. Learn how we think and work. * Our product constitution, a story about our mission * Agents at work - Latent Space, podcast with our cofounder, Stanislas Polu, 2024 * LLMs reasoning and agentic capabilities over time - dotAI, podcast with our cofounder, Stanislas Polu, 2024