Incident and Escalations Manager - US-West

The Incident and Escalation Management team (IEM) is part of Datadog's Global Support Engineering (GSE) organization. IEM exists to continuously improve Datadog's overall customer experience during incidents and other critical moments. We're looking for experts with a background in incident management and escalation handling to provide fast incident response, clear ownership, and calm, confident communication for our global customer base. In this individual contributor role, you will play a key part in customer communication, technical engagement, and incident management for our global customers.

You will also implement processes and automations, use the same incident and case management tools we build for our customers, and help shape how they evolve. 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.

• Drive incidents and escalations to resolution from start to finish, including triage, coordination with our support, engineering and product teams. Own the response and keep customers and internal teams informed throughout.
• Independently coordinate cross-functional stakeholders through complex incidents and escalations, making the call on prioritization, response strategy, and when to pull in additional teams or leadership.
• Own communications during active incidents, including sensitive, large-scale, and publicly visible events, adapting the message for customers, internal teams, and leadership.
• Lead projects that deliver operational improvements to how IEM detects, manages, and communicates during incidents and escalations as Datadog and its products evolve.
• Create, maintain, and improve incident and escalation documentation, runbooks, and training materials, and lead retrospectives that turn individual incidents into durable process change.
• Mentor peers on incident and escalation management best practices, and contribute to interviewing and hiring.
• Design and implement real-time and proactive monitoring of customer infrastructure to surface customer-impacting risks before they elevate.
• Identify recurring cloud infrastructure and product issues across incidents and escalations, and partner with Engineering to feed findings back and reduce recurrence.

• 5+ years of related professional experience, including experience in incident management and customer escalations, with demonstrable ownership of complex incidents and critical customer situations; experience in a SaaS, cloud, or observability environment is a plus
• 2+ years of experience in a hands-on technical role at a software or cloud company, such as Support Engineering, Site Reliability Engineering, Solutions Architecture, or a similar technical function
• Strong familiarity with cloud computing and modern software architectures; scripting ability in Python, JavaScript, or shell is a plus
• Ability to correlate behaviors across known system interdependencies, assess customer and technical impact, and make sound decisions while remaining calm in high-pressure and ambiguous situations
• Experience independently coordinating cross‑functional stakeholders and driving complex incidents and escalations toward resolution
• Experience driving projects from conception through delivery, with strong problem‑solving skills and the ability to operate effectively in a fast‑paced environment
• Strong written and verbal English communication skills, with the ability to communicate clearly with both technical and customer‑facing audiences
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Science/Technology, Engineering, or equivalent practical…