Was long and ultimately a waste of time - I would exercise extreme caution going into this. The entire process was about a month and a half long. Things started out on a very promising note and ended under vague circumstances. First round: Phone screen with Recruiter, very quick and pleasant. They are very straightforward about what they are looking for. Mostly a quick overview of your client-facing experience, and technical background. Very upfront about the salary expectations, and very transparent about the fact that this role is non-coding. Recruiter kept me in the loop the entire time and was a valuable resource in terms of preparation. She said practicing easy-medium difficulty questions on Leet Code is good for prep. Second round: 30-minute phone screen with a hiring manager. Again, an extremely pleasant experience. Discussed my client-facing background, why I want to work for Datadog, asked for an example of projects I've worked on, etc. Pretty standard interview to vet how I technically communicate and get to know me. It felt very conversational. Again, they were straight forward about the fact that this is a non-programming role. Third round: Hiring challenge. This round is a gauntlet and you have a week to complete it. This is a take-home assignment that requires you to sign up for a free trial of Datadog and "play around with it". They leave it completely open-ended and are mostly aiming to see how you document/troubleshoot your interactions with the platform. The second part of the assignment has you choose 2 case study scenarios where you need to simulate responding to a customer question. The questions are mostly contrived examples and are doable if you dig into the documentation. The prompt says it takes about 5-6 hours to complete the hiring challenge, it took me about 15-20 hours. Take that with a grain of salt, it could take you more or could take you less time. Plan accordingly based on your level of comfort with the product. Final round: Again, an absolute gauntlet. This round is a 3.5 hour-long interview with the Director, current team members, team leads, two Software Engineers, and a wrap-up with the Director and hiring manager. This is where things took a turn. - It starts with a quick briefing on the day ahead with the Director, very conversational. The next round is talking with 2 Solutions Engineers about your experience. I demoed a personal project for them. Again, it was clarified that the role was a non-programming role. - Next round is a pair-troubleshooting exercise with 2 team leads. Basically the same as the hiring challenge, but in front of others. You have 5 "broken pieces" of the site that you are expected to fix. They give you all the necessary documentation in advance to complete the exercise. It was pretty straightforward. - Next round is the coding challenge with 2 software engineers. This round was not so successful for me. The engineer leading the exercise was quite short with me, and not very communicative or receptive to my questions. Very much had the feeling during that round that this would be held against me, but was not overly concerned because the role is, as they said multiple times, NOT CODING RELATED. For anybody prepping, do your diligence on a concept called "Levenshtein distance", that's what was asked of me. Walked away feeling it'd be a rejection on the technical. - Wrap up session: very pleasant conversation and I overall felt good even though the coding challenge didn't go as well as I would have liked. Again, this is a technical role, but not one that requires you to code. I was called back a week later by the recruiter and was told that while they valued my hard work, they rejected me due to the coding exercise. Regardless of the positive feedback from the team and hiring manager, the coding exercise will make or break you. Study up, and be well prepared for advanced algorithms in that coding exercise. Easy to Medium level Leet Code is a misleading bit of advice for those prepping for this. Overall, I was treated pretty well by everyone involved except for one engineer. The little amount of feedback I received was inappropriate for the amount of time the entire process took. To be rejected for a role that I was a clear fit for based on a coding challenge that ultimately had nothing to do with the day-to-day work seemed slightly cruel. Exercise caution and study up.

I had a very disappointing experience with Datadog's recruitment process. After making it to the final round for a Solutions role, I later learned that recruiters had contacted former colleagues at my current company to ask for feedback about me. This information made its way back internally, putting my current job at risk. Not only is this highly unprofessional, but it also raises serious confidentiality concerns. I would caution candidates to be aware of this before applying.