SlipstreamJobs tracks this role from the company's public career site. Apply directly on the employer's site.
Datadog's Incident and Escalation Management (IEM) team is seeking a Senior Incident and Escalations Manager to join the Global Support Engineering organization in Sydney. This is an individual contributor role focused on improving Datadog's customer experience during critical incidents and escalations.
You will lead response to complex, high-impact incidents and escalations from start to finish, setting response strategy, driving cross-functional coordination, and maintaining clear ownership through resolution. You'll navigate competing priorities across multiple critical customer situations, independently assessing business and technical impact to determine appropriate response and escalation strategies.
Key responsibilities include:
- Leading response to the most complex and ambiguous incidents, setting strategy and driving cross-functional coordination
- Independently assessing business and technical impact across multiple concurrent critical situations
- Representing IEM to regional Support, Sales, and Engineering leadership, building relationships to drive response when situations move faster than process allows
- Leading communications during highly sensitive, public, or large-scale incidents, adapting strategies for customers, internal leadership, and stakeholders
- Acting as a trusted incident and escalation partner across Support, Engineering, Product, and other teams, influencing decisions and driving alignment
- Leading high-impact, cross-functional projects that improve how Datadog manages incidents and escalations at scale
- Establishing and evolving incident and escalation best practices, documentation, runbooks, and training
- Mentoring and developing other IEM or GSE members, providing guidance during complex situations, and contributing to hiring
- Designing and championing proactive monitoring and detection strategies
- Identifying systemic patterns across incidents and escalations, influencing Engineering and Product partners to address root causes
You will use the same incident and case management tools Datadog builds for customers and help shape how they evolve. Datadog operates as a hybrid workplace to support work-life harmony.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 8+ years of related professional experience, including at least 4 years in incident management and customer escalations, with demonstrable ownership of major, high-impact incidents and business-critical customer escalations in SaaS, cloud, observability, or similarly complex software environments
- Significant hands-on technical experience at a software or cloud company in roles such as Support Engineering, Site Reliability Engineering, Solutions Architecture, or similar technical functions
- Strong understanding of cloud computing, distributed systems, and modern software architectures, with ability to reason across multiple technical domains and system dependencies; scripting ability in Python, JavaScript, or shell is a plus
- Demonstrated ability to lead through ambiguity during high-pressure, high-visibility situations, evaluating complex technical and business factors to determine effective incident or escalation strategy
- Experience operating as the sole or most senior incident responder in a region or timezone, making consequential decisions without in-hours escalation path, and working effectively with customers and internal teams across different cultures and working norms
- Experience identifying systemic patterns across incidents or escalations and translating them into operational, process, or technical improvements that reduce recurrence
- Proven experience driving complex, cross-functional projects from conception through delivery and influencing improvements beyond immediate area of ownership
- Exceptional written and verbal English communication skills, with judgment to communicate effectively with technical teams, customers, and senior stakeholders during sensitive situations
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Science/Technology, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience
