Datadog Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

We started with a recruiter chat to make sure we were a good fit. Then came the first coding interview, followed by a second coding interview. After that, there was a round that included a coding interview, a system design discussion, and a presentation of a project where I made a big impact, along with some behavioral questions. Finally, there was a team match session where team managers presented their teams and projects, and I got to choose the one I preferred.

So the process started with a recruiter chat to see if I fit any of their roles. I mentioned I was in a bit of a rush with another interview process, so she really tried to speed things up for me. It included: 1. A coding interview about building a stream processing thing for logs and queries. 2. Another coding interview for a prefix tag search setup. 3. A system design round, kinda like designing r/place. 4. An interview digging into a past project of mine. 5. A values interview with questions about how I've dealt with people before. The recruiter was great throughout, keeping me updated and telling me what interviewers were looking for. I even met the team. Honestly, it was one of the best interview experiences I've had.

It was a long interview process, but not excessively difficult. I believe I was ultimately unsuccessful, though. The process included a take-home project, which I honestly should share on GitHub but won't out of respect. There were 6 interviews in total, with two recruiters involved. My first interview was with my direct manager, who seemed great and basically guaranteed me the job. The second interview was with my skip-level manager, who had to rush because he was leaving for vacation. He was in Europe, and I'm not entirely sure where he was connecting from since he was remote. He appeared detached and uninterested in my attempts at humor or small talk. About an hour into the interview, I felt I might have been talking too much. He had a bearded axe on the wall behind him, which I commented on, but he quickly dismissed it. I performed very well in all other interviews, but this one was a deal-breaker. Despite passing the tests and impressing everyone except that one skip manager, I was told I'd be contacted about future opportunities within 8 months, but I never heard back. One frustrating aspect was that the interviewers seemed overly focused on their own work and expected me to be intimately familiar with their tools and internal workings, which is unrealistic given the limited information available. Some interviewers did acknowledge this, but the skip manager, in particular, seemed unimpressed or uninterested in my thoughts on the video game industry, which was relevant as the role was for game monitoring software. It felt like they expected me to impress them with knowledge they already possessed. It's akin to going to a mechanic who just tuned a Lamborghini and asking your opinion on Lamborghinis when you've never worked on one. Nevertheless, the recruiter informed me that everyone but the skip manager liked me and considered me a strong candidate. He was the only European interviewer, which is noteworthy. The take-home assignment took me about 24 hours spread over 3 days to complete to my satisfaction, rather than the 'few hours' suggested, as it had many requirements. I guess it was thorough, but it didn't lead to an offer. I was also likely the oldest candidate by at least 5 years.