Research Manager - Post-Training for Agents (AI)

Location: New York, New York, USA; hybrid workplace

Salary: $244,000–$305,000 USD per year, plus equity and potential variable compensation

Company

Datadog provides an observability and security platform for the AI era, unifying applications, infrastructure, data, models, and security.

What you will do

• Lead research programs in agent post-training and reinforcement learning, setting technical direction grounded in observability and security.
• Guide and mentor researchers and research engineers while contributing to research strategy, experimentation, model development, and technical problem-solving.
• Design reinforcement learning approaches, post-training methods, and training loops for agents operating in complex environments.
• Build simulated environments, synthetic data generation methods, and evaluation frameworks for scalable training and rigorous measurement.
• Collaborate with Research, Product, and Engineering teams to translate autonomous-agent advances into scalable Datadog capabilities.
• Contribute to publications, conference presentations, and open-source model artifacts and benchmarks.

Requirements

• PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• Deep expertise in reinforcement learning, AI agents, post-training, or generative modeling.
• Hands-on experience with reinforcement learning systems, agent training methods, simulated environments, synthetic data pipelines, or evaluation frameworks.
• Demonstrated impact through influential publications, significant model or system contributions, widely used research artifacts, or equivalent technical achievements.
• Senior-level technical experience leading, mentoring, and developing researchers or engineers while remaining hands-on.
• Ability to communicate complex research findings effectively to technical and non-technical audiences.

Nice to have

• Experience in an industry research lab, startup, academic environment, or another research setting.
• Experience presenting at NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, or other top-tier conferences.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid workplace focused on collaboration and work-life harmony.
• Competitive global benefits, healthcare, dental, parental planning, and mental health benefits.
• New-hire stock equity, ESPP, 401(k) plan and match, paid time off, and fitness reimbursements.
• Collaboration opportunities with colleagues in Datadog offices in New York City and Paris.
• Conference and meetup attendance, an intra-departmental mentor and buddy program, and employee resource groups.