Datadog Software Engineer interview experience

The coding questions were very “engineering real-world” themed: I had to implement a simple regex parser, and then I designed a YouTube-like video sharing service. After that, I worked on parsing a stream of logs in the same spirit as what you’d see in an observability product—extracting the right signals from continuous event data.

What surprised me was how much the system design and coding quality standards mattered together. Even though I was able to complete the tasks, the rejection feedback pointed to not meeting senior expectations—especially around how deeply I reasoned through design