Datadog
Compensation Insight

How Datadog Pays

Datadog publishes titles but no grade codes, so this report normalises them into a DD0 to DD10 ladder priced across 16 markets, alongside RSU and PSU equity and a 15 percent discount ESPP, a $27.06M CEO package at 131:1, and 130 FY2025 H-1B filings.

8,100 employees · Nasdaq: DDOG · Datadog, Inc. · New York, New York · FY ends 31 December
Employees
~8,100
Headcount at 31 December 2025 across 35 countries, up from about 6,500 a year earlier. Roughly 44 percent sit outside the United States.
France share of non-US staff
~34%
Datadog names Paris alongside New York as a primary research and development concentration, so its largest offshore site is a build site rather than a support site.
FY2025 revenue
$3.43B
Up 28 percent year on year. Second-quarter 2026 revenue was $1.12 billion, up 36 percent, with $279 million of free cash flow.
Stock-based compensation
$750.7M
FY2025 expense net of capitalised amounts, up 31.6 percent from $570.3 million. Research and development carried $469.5 million of it, about 21.9 percent of revenue in total.
CEO total pay
$27.06M
Olivier Pomel's FY2025 Summary Compensation Table total, of which $25.83 million was stock awards, about 95.5 percent of the reported figure.
CEO pay ratio
131:1
Measured against a $206,250 median employee identified for FY2025, a low ratio for a large-cap software issuer because the median employee is well paid.
H-1B median base
$205,000
Across 119 visible FY2025 wage records; 130 labour condition applications were certified and 78 petitions approved with no denials.
Attrition
Not disclosed
No company-wide attrition rate appears in any reviewed filing or release, and no city-level headcount is published either.
Locations
United States
France
United Kingdom
Ireland
Netherlands
Portugal
Israel
India
Singapore
Japan
South Korea
Australia
New Zealand
1.00× base / 1.00× TC vs New York

Band Hierarchy

Datadog publishes role titles in its job postings and its visa filings but no enterprise-wide grade code. The DD0 to DD9 ladder here is a research normalisation of those titles; the only layer Datadog itself describes as a compensation population is the named executive group in the proxy statement.

Entry ladder — DD0

DD0
Entry, support, sales development and internShared · variable 20% · reported
Technical Support Engineer I, Sales Development Representative, Customer Success Associate, intern

Individual contributor ladder — DD1 through DD3

DD3
Senior engineer / senior professionalTechnical IC · variable 9% · verified
Senior Software Engineer, Senior Product Manager, Senior Sales Engineer, Senior Customer Success Manager
DD2
Software Engineer II / experienced professionalTechnical IC · variable 6% · reported
Software Engineer II, Product Manager II, Sales Engineer, Technical Support Engineer II
DD1
Software Engineer I / associate professionalTechnical IC · variable 3% · reported
Software Engineer I, associate product analyst, Customer Success Manager I, Recruiter I

Converged IC and management ladder — DD4 through DD7

DD7
Distinguished engineer / senior directorIC and management · variable 25% · modeled
Distinguished Engineer, senior director engineering, senior director product, senior regional leader
DD6
Principal engineer / directorIC and management · variable 20% · reported
Principal Engineer, engineering director, product director, regional sales director
DD5
Senior Staff / Manager II / senior managerIC and management · variable 15% · verified
Senior Staff Software Engineer, Engineering Manager II, senior manager, lead product designer
DD4
Staff engineer / Manager I / group product managerIC and management · variable 10% · verified
Staff Software Engineer, Engineering Manager I, group product manager, senior solutions architect

Executive ladder — DD8 and DD9

DD9
Senior vice president, executive vice president or presidentExecutive · variable 75% · modeled
Senior vice president, executive vice president, business president, global functional head
DD8
Vice president / area vice presidentExecutive · variable 40% · modeled
Vice President Engineering, Vice President Product, Area Vice President Sales Engineering, Vice President People

Disclosed executive layer

Chief Executive Officer
Olivier Pomel, co-founder
Fully disclosed: salary, cash incentive, stock awards, all other compensation and the 131 to 1 pay ratio.
Named executive officers
Alexis Lê-Quôc as Chief Technology Officer and co-founder, David Obstler as Chief Financial Officer, Adam Blitzer as Chief Operating Officer, Sean Walters as Chief Revenue Officer
Full Summary Compensation Table rows, individual equity grants and individual bonus attainment.
Executive officers outside the named group
Kerry Acocella as General Counsel and Secretary, David Galloreese as Chief People Officer, Yanbing Li as Chief Product Officer
No compensation table exists. Their pay is visible only through Section 16 share movements, such as Acocella's 5,371-share sale in June 2026.
Regional and functional leadership
Americas, EMEA and APAC leaders and vice presidents of engineering and product
Nothing is disclosed. Job postings occasionally expose an area vice president base range and that is the entire public record.
VerifiedOnly the base salary rows at DD0, DD3, DD4 and DD5 rest on an official Datadog posting. Everything else is reported or modelled, and the DD7 to DD9 rows have no direct Datadog observation at all.

Track divergence

DD0 to DD1
Two different risk shapes share one entry band. A Technical Support Engineer I is salaried with almost no variable pay, while a sales development representative carries 30 to 50 percent of the package in commission.
DD1 to DD3
Purely individual contributor. Equity does the work: annualised stock rises from about 21 percent of the package at Software Engineer I to about 44 percent at senior, while the cash bonus stays under 10 percent of base.
DD4 to DD5
The ladders converge rather than fork. Staff Software Engineer posts at $244,000 to $305,000 and Engineering Manager I sits in the same band, while Senior Staff at $272,000 to $340,000 posts above Engineering Manager II at $252,000 to $315,000.
DD6 to DD7
A principal engineer and an engineering director are treated as the same band. Public evidence thins sharply here: director base is visible in visa records but no equity figure of any kind is published below the named executive layer.
DD8 and above
Cash stops being the story. Named executive salaries are flat at $445,833 for four of the five officers, so the entire spread between a $13.10 million and a $27.06 million package is equity.

Hierarchy qualifications and legacy structures

  • Datadog job postings and labour condition applications expose a consistent title sequence — Software Engineer, Software Engineer II, Senior, Staff, Senior Staff, Manager I Engineering, Manager II Engineering, Director and Area Vice President — but Datadog has never published a grade chart, so DD0 to DD9 is a comparison device and nothing more.
  • The crosswalk is most reliable for software engineering, where four official base ranges and four employee-reported total compensation points line up. It is weakest for sales, customer success and corporate functions, where the same scope can carry a very different cash and commission mix.
  • Manager I appears in visa records at $220,000 to $260,000 in New York and $244,000 in Boston, which places first-line engineering management inside the Staff engineer band rather than above it.
  • There is no legacy grade harmonisation problem here. Datadog grew organically and through small acquisitions, and no predecessor company's band system appears in any filing. The only real legacy structure is the 2012 Equity Incentive Plan, which stopped taking new grants at the 2019 initial public offering.
  • The named executive and chief executive rows are deliberately excluded from the band table. They are United States proxy disclosures for five specific people, not a level that exists in any local market, and multiplying them by a city factor would produce a Bangalore chief executive salary that means nothing.

Peer-level mapping

BandArchetypePeer mappingCaveat
DD0Entry, support, sales development and internEarly-career support and inside-sales entry equivalent to a Google L2 or Amazon L3This band mixes a salaried support job with a commission-carrying sales development job, so the cash mix is more meaningful than the level label.Base median from the official Technical Support Engineer I posting at $66,000 to $88,000; the variable weight reflects the 30 to 50 percent sales development on-target-earnings split.
DD1Software Engineer I / associate professionalGoogle L3 and Amazon L4 scopeDatadog publishes no grade code, so the mapping describes the scope a hiring manager expects rather than an equivalent pay band.Employee-reported United States observation of $144,000 base, $38,300 annualised stock and $2,900 bonus for a $185,000 package, smoothed onto the band median.
DD2Software Engineer II / experienced professionalGoogle L4 and Amazon L5 scopeSales engineering sits in this band on scope but on a 20 to 60 percent variable plan, so its cash shape looks nothing like the engineering row.Employee-reported $171,000 base with $75,400 annualised stock for $246,000 total, cross-checked against Software Engineer II labour condition application wages of $142,800 to $180,000.
DD3Senior engineer / senior professionalGoogle L5 and Amazon L6 scopeThe base range is an official Datadog posting, but the total depends almost entirely on the equity grant, which Datadog never publishes.Official Senior Software Engineer posting at $192,000 to $240,000 base; employee-reported $231,000 base with $179,000 annualised stock for $410,000 total.
DD4Staff engineer / Manager I / group product managerGoogle L6 and Amazon L7 scopeThis is where the two ladders meet. A Staff engineer and a Manager I sit in the same band and the official base ranges overlap heavily.Official Staff Software Engineer posting at $244,000 to $305,000 with ten or more years listed; employee-reported $283,000 base with $289,000 annualised stock for $572,000 total.
DD5Senior Staff / Manager II / senior managerUpper staff individual contributor or multi-team managerTwo official postings anchor this band and they disagree in the useful direction: the Senior Staff engineer range sits above the Manager II range at both ends.Official Senior Staff Software Engineer posting at $272,000 to $340,000 and Engineering Manager II at $252,000 to $315,000; a Senior Staff visa record shows $350,000 base in New York.
DD6Principal engineer / directorPrincipal individual contributor or first-layer directorDirector base is evidenced by visa records at $290,000 to $301,600 for product roles, but the equity component above it is entirely modelled.Director postings plus FY2025 labour condition application records for Director Product Management at $295,000 and Director Product Operations at $301,600.
DD7Distinguished engineer / senior directorDistinguished individual contributor or senior directorTitles at this level are observable in public profiles, but no Datadog pay record of any kind was found for the band.Interpolated between the evidenced director band and the vice president band; no direct observation exists.
DD8Vice president / area vice presidentVice president over a major function or geographyThe base spread of $238,000 to $475,000 is unusually wide because a sales area vice president carries far more of the package in commission than a functional vice president does.Area Vice President posting plus executive-market interpolation. Datadog discloses no compensation table below the named executive layer.
DD9Senior vice president, executive vice president or presidentEnterprise officer or function president below the named executive layerEntirely modelled. The general counsel, chief people officer and chief product officer sit in this zone and none of them appears in the Summary Compensation Table.Corporate hierarchy normalisation anchored below the disclosed named executive floor of $13.10 million; no Datadog range is public for this layer.

Critical evidence warning

Datadog publishes no salary bands, no band minimums or midpoints, no bonus targets below the named executive layer and no equity grant table for any employee. What it does publish is a set of United States base salary ranges in individual job postings, which is genuinely useful and is used here as the anchor wherever it exists. Everything above the base line — the equity component, the bonus target, every non-United States figure and every band above senior director — is either a third-party observation or a calibrated model around one. Use these figures to orient a conversation, not to quote a Datadog range back at a recruiter.


Compensation by Band — New York

Low / median / high annual values at 1.00× base and 1.00× total-compensation factors versus New York. Total equals base plus bonus plus annualized equity.

BandTitleBaseVariableTotal TCEquity
DD0
Entry, support, sales development and intern
0–2 years · reported
$75K$101K20%
$108K
$92K$124K
$3K
DD1
Software Engineer I / associate professional
0–2 years · reported
$126K$170K3%
$190K
$162K$219K
$38K
DD2
Software Engineer II / experienced professional
2–5 years · reported
$153K$207K6%
$265K
$225K$305K
$75K
DD3
Senior engineer / senior professional
5–8 years · verified
$184K$248K9%
$405K
$344K$466K
$170K
DD4
Staff engineer / Manager I / group product manager
8–12 years · verified
$233K$315K10%
$540K
$459K$621K
$240K
DD5
Senior Staff / Manager II / senior manager
10–15 years · verified
$252K$340K15%
$640K
$544K$736K
$300K
DD6
Principal engineer / director
12–18 years · reported
$276K$374K20%
$850K
$723K$978K
$460K
DD7
Distinguished engineer / senior director
15–20+ years · modeled
$302K$408K25%
$1.12M
$952K$1.29M
$675K
DD8
Vice president / area vice president
15–22+ years · modeled
$303K$409K40%
$1.50M
$1.27M$1.73M
$1.00M
DD9
Senior vice president, executive vice president or president
18–25+ years · modeled
$383K$518K75%
$4.00M
$3.40M$4.60M
$3.21M
Official filings and company job postings · 8 reported band cellsReportedModeledVerifiedBase and total use a plus or minus 15 percent planning envelope around the median; equity uses plus or minus 25 percent, which is deliberately wider because grant size at Datadog varies more by hiring context than by level.

Total Compensation Range by Band

Total compensation in New York across the employee bands. Proxy-disclosed executive cohorts are excluded so the employee bands stay readable.

DD0$92K$124KDD1$162K$219KDD2$225K$305KDD3$344K$466KDD4$459K$621KDD5$544K$736KDD6$723K$978KDD7$952K$1.29MDD8$1.27M$1.73M$0$250K$500K$750K$1.00M$1.25M$1.50M$1.75M

Global Footprint & Pay Arbitrage

Datadog reported about 8,100 employees across 35 countries at 31 December 2025, roughly 44 percent of them outside the United States and about 34 percent of that non-US population in France. New York is the pay anchor and every other market is calibrated against the New York median.

~8,100
Employees at 31 December 2025, across 35 countries
44%
Share of the workforce outside the United States
~3,900
Research and development employees; 3,600 in sales and marketing
16
Markets modelled in this report, across 13 countries

Office and market catalogue — calibration factors versus New York

LocationLikely office profilePresenceBaseTC
New York
United States · USD
Headquarters and a primary engineering, product, corporate and go-to-market hub; the pay anchor for this reportOfficial filings and company job postings1.00×1.00×
San Francisco
United States · USD
West Coast engineering, product and go-to-market presence with a small but high-wage visa recordOfficial office plus job and visa records1.02×1.02×
Boston
United States · USD
Engineering and product hub and the second-largest United States visa worksite after New YorkOfficial office plus public job and visa records0.97×0.95×
Denver
United States · USD
Regional United States engineering and go-to-market office with the thinnest public role sample of the four US sitesOfficial office disclosure0.90×0.88×
Paris
France · EUR
Primary non-US engineering concentration and the largest offshore employee population; France holds about 34 percent of non-US staffNamed in the 10-K as a primary research and development site0.58×0.47×
London
United Kingdom · GBP
Large EMEA commercial and technical customer-facing hub with direct employee pay observations at two engineering levelsOfficial office plus employee-reported records0.72×0.60×
Dublin
Ireland · EUR
EMEA go-to-market, support and corporate operations hub; no direct Datadog pay observation was found for the cityOfficial office; pay modelled from EMEA comparables0.68×0.58×
Amsterdam
Netherlands · EUR
EMEA sales and customer-facing office, modelled between the London, Dublin and Paris observationsOfficial office; pay modelled0.65×0.55×
Lisbon
Portugal · EUR
Growing European engineering and operations location and the lowest-cost European market in this tableEmployee-reported engineering records0.46×0.40×
Tel Aviv
Israel · ILS
Technical and go-to-market presence; public headcount and pay detail are thin and every cell here is modelledLocation observed; pay modelled from regional technology benchmarks0.66×0.58×
Bangalore
India · INR
APAC go-to-market, support, customer success and operations; the engineering footprint is not publicly quantifiedOfficial office plus third-party salary observations0.18×0.17×
Singapore
Singapore · SGD
Southeast Asia commercial, solutions engineering and customer success hub; the clearest sales on-target-earnings evidence outside the United StatesOfficial office plus third-party sales records0.68×0.58×
Tokyo
Japan · JPY
Japan commercial, technical support and solutions engineering hub with a small reported salary sampleOfficial office plus a small third-party sample0.55×0.48×
Seoul
South Korea · KRW
Official sales presence and leased office confirmed in the 10-K, but public salary samples are effectively absentOffice verified in the FY2025 10-K; pay modelled from Tokyo and Singapore0.58×0.50×
Sydney
Australia · AUD
ANZ sales, solutions engineering, support and customer success hub with multiple local salary observationsOfficial office plus Australian salary records and postings0.72×0.61×
Auckland
New Zealand · NZD
New Zealand market reference only. No major Datadog office was verified here in any reviewed official source, so treat every cell as a market comparison rather than a Datadog rangeNot verified as a Datadog office; modelled market reference0.62×0.53×

Datadog's disclosed footprint spans 35 countries, but only the 16 markets modelled here carry either an office confirmation or a usable public pay sample. Auckland is included as a New Zealand comparison row and is explicitly not evidence of a Datadog office.

New York anchor medians — the basis of every modeled cell

BandBaseStockBonusTotal
DD0$88K$3K$18K$108K
DD1$148K$38K$4K$190K
DD2$180K$75K$10K$265K
DD3$216K$170K$19K$405K
DD4$274K$240K$26K$540K
DD5$296K$300K$44K$640K
DD6$325K$460K$65K$850K
  • New York is the anchor because it is the headquarters, the largest visa worksite at 186 cumulative records and the only city where official base ranges and employee-reported total compensation both exist at four consecutive levels.
  • Paris is the single most important thing to understand about Datadog's geography. It is named in the 10-K alongside New York as a primary research and development concentration, and France holds about a third of all non-US employees, so the largest offshore site is a build site rather than a support site.
  • Bangalore evidence is function-mixed. A 67-profile third-party sample averages about ₹3.5 million across all roles with a ₹2.25 million to ₹13.48 million spread, and the visible technical points — senior DevOps at about ₹5.7 million, senior software engineer at about ₹4.4 million, site reliability engineer at about ₹4.0 million — read as commercial, support and operations weighted rather than as a mirror of the New York engineering ladder.
  • Seoul is a verified leased office in the 10-K but has effectively no public salary sample, so its factors are borrowed from Tokyo and Singapore. Auckland is not a verified Datadog office at all and is carried only as a New Zealand market reference.
  • Datadog publishes no city-level headcount anywhere, so this catalogue cannot rank offices by size. The only geographic quantities in the filings are the 44 percent non-US share and the 34 percent France share of that.

Model rules

  • Every modelled cell is the New York median multiplied by the city base or total factor and then by the 26 August 2026 European Central Bank reference-rate snapshot. No employer benefit load is added anywhere: a total compensation cell is base plus target bonus plus annualised equity and nothing else.
  • Base and total carry separate factors because they are separately evidenced. In Paris, base runs at about 58 percent of New York while total runs at about 47 percent, and that gap is a real difference in the annualised equity component rather than an artefact of applying one global grant range to every city.
  • The factors are flat across the ladder, and the fields that would interpolate them by seniority are deliberately omitted. Where two-point evidence exists it shows the ratio holding or drifting slightly down with seniority, not converging on New York: Paris runs 0.46 at Software Engineer II and 0.41 at senior, London 0.61 and 0.56, Lisbon 0.43 and 0.37.
  • Equity is annualised by dividing an observed or modelled total grant by four. That ignores front-loading, refresh overlap, forfeiture, share-price movement and tax, and Datadog publishes no vesting curve that would let it be done properly.
  • A cell in Dublin, Amsterdam, Tel Aviv, Seoul or Auckland has no direct Datadog observation behind it and should be read as a planning envelope. A cell in New York, Boston, Paris, London, Lisbon, Bangalore, Sydney, Singapore or Tokyo has at least one.

Variable Pay & Annual Cash Incentive

Datadog runs three unrelated variable pay systems: a nearly nominal bonus on the technical ladder, a full commission structure on the sales ladder, and a formal net new annual recurring revenue plan for named executives that is the only one disclosed in any detail.

BandTargetMechanismRecent payout
DD0
Technical support and operations entry
0–5% of baseSalary with occasional spot and referral awards. No published bonus grid exists for this population.Not publicly disclosed
DD0
Sales development representative
30–50% of baseCommission on qualified pipeline, activity and conversion. Cadence is not published by Datadog; monthly or quarterly is the market norm.Not publicly disclosed
DD1–DD3
Engineering, product and design individual contributors
0–10% of baseA small annual cash bonus where it is used at all. Employee submissions repeatedly show a de minimis cash component next to a large annualised equity component.Not publicly disclosed
DD2–DD5
Sales engineering and customer success
20–60% of baseQuota or team-goal plans tied to adoption, retention and technical win rates rather than to booked revenue alone.Not publicly disclosed
DD3–DD8
Account executives and sales leadership
50–100% of baseCommission against bookings and annual recurring revenue with accelerators above goal. Singapore records show account executive base at S$100,000 to S$120,000 against on-target earnings of S$184,000 to S$254,000, roughly a doubling.Not publicly disclosed
DD4–DD7
Managers and directors
10–35% of baseModelled mix of company, function and individual outcomes. Datadog publishes no formula and no payout history for this population.Not publicly disclosed
DD8–DD9
Vice president, senior vice president and executive vice president
25–100% of baseLeadership scorecard, with sales executives aligned to channel annual recurring revenue. Nothing below the named executive layer is disclosed.Not publicly disclosed
NEO
Named executive officers other than the chief revenue officer
94% of base, or $425,000Net new annual recurring revenue against the board-approved operating plan. Nothing is earned below 50 percent attainment, accelerators apply above target, the payout is capped at 200 percent and a non-GAAP operating income target can decelerate it.FY2025 paid 183% of target; FY2024 paid about 93%
CRO
Chief Revenue Officer
100% of base, or $475,000Net new annual recurring revenue generated by the sales channels the chief revenue officer supervises, determined semi-annually in FY2025 rather than annually.FY2025 paid 81% of target
ModeledVerifiedThe named executive plan is unusually mechanical for a software company. The compensation committee sets a net new annual recurring revenue target from the annual operating plan, nothing is earned below 50 percent attainment, accelerators run above target, the payout caps at 200 percent, and a separate non-GAAP operating income target can pull the result down if profitability misses plan. FY2025 attainment of about 139 percent of the revenue target produced about 183 percent of target bonus, close to the cap, after FY2024 attainment of about 93 percent produced about 93 percent of target.

Executive incentive targets — percent of salary

Chief Executive Officer
94% of salary
A $425,000 target on a $445,833 salary. The cash incentive is under 3 percent of the reported package.
Chief Technology Officer, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer
94% of salary
Identical $425,000 targets and identical $777,251 payouts, because all three sit on the same corporate plan as the chief executive.
Chief Revenue Officer
100% of salary
A $475,000 target on a $470,833 salary, measured against supervised sales-channel annual recurring revenue rather than the company plan.
Every other employee
Not publicly disclosed
No target percentage, no formula and no payout history is published for any population below the named executive officers.

Named-executive outcomes

ExecutiveTargetPaidAttainment
Olivier Pomel$425,000$777,251183% of target on about 139% net new ARR attainment
Alexis Lê-Quôc$425,000$777,251183% of target
David Obstler$425,000$777,251183% of target
Adam Blitzer$425,000$777,251183% of target
Sean Walters$475,000$383,46881% of target on the sales-channel plan

Employee payout timing and history

There is no evidence that the 183 percent FY2025 executive outcome reached anyone outside the five named executives. Datadog discloses no employee bonus pool, no company-wide payout factor, no merit budget and no review calendar. Anonymous employee reports describe merit increases in the 5 to 10 percent range without promotion and selective equity refreshes, which are individual anecdotes rather than a policy.

Sales and special incentives

Sales compensation is the part of Datadog's package that behaves least like the rest of it. An account executive can carry as much value in commission as in salary, so a headline salary figure from a review site is close to meaningless for these roles unless it states whether it is base or on-target earnings. The clearest public evidence is Singapore, where reported account executive base of S$100,000 to S$120,000 sits against on-target earnings of S$184,000 to S$254,000, and Sydney, where technical support roles at A$78,000 to A$110,000 sit far below sales engineering observations of A$170,000 to A$280,000.


Equity — RSUs, PSUs, Options & ESPP

Datadog is a United States issuer, so employee equity means restricted stock units and employee stock purchase plan purchases rather than an Indian-style employee stock ownership plan. Performance share units exist but only at the named executive layer, and options are legacy: the 2019 plan permits them, current grants do not use them, and the only exercises in the insider record run against a pre-initial-public-offering $10.74 strike.

2019 Equity Incentive Plan
Active; approved 6 September 2019 and the primary plan since the initial public offering
Verified
Permits incentive and nonstatutory stock options, stock appreciation rights, restricted stock, restricted stock units, performance awards and other stock-based awards. Options and appreciation rights are priced at no less than 100 percent of fair market value, or 110 percent for a ten percent holder receiving an incentive option. Vesting is set award by award; named executive grants made in 2025 carry four-year service vesting and employee-reported restricted stock units commonly vest over four years.
Reserve: 108,289,634 shares available for future awards and 17,034,472 unvested restricted stock units and performance share units outstanding at 31 March 2026
2019 Equity Incentive Plan exhibit and the Q1 2026 Form 10-Q
2019 Employee Stock Purchase Plan
Active; approved 6 September 2019 with international subplans permitted
Verified
Payroll deductions generally up to 15 percent of eligible earnings, with purchases at 85 percent of the lower of the fair market value at the offering start or on the purchase date. Offering periods have historically run about six months and the plan permits up to 27 months. There is no service vesting after purchase.
Reserve: 26,719,708 shares available at 31 March 2026
2019 Employee Stock Purchase Plan exhibit, Q1 2026 Form 10-Q and the Datadog careers benefits page
2012 Equity Incentive Plan
Closed to new grants since the 2019 initial public offering
Verified
Legacy pre-initial-public-offering options and stock awards continue under their original terms. Unused shares transferred to the 2019 Plan at the offering. The $10.74 strike appearing in 2026 chief executive and chief technology officer exercises comes from this era.
Reserve: No new award reserve
Q1 2026 Form 10-Q
Performance share unit programme for named executives
Active; the 2025 annual grants were made on 1 April 2025
Verified
Annual named executive awards are split 50 percent restricted stock units and 50 percent target performance share units, with the number of units earned set by performance achievement and service vesting continuing over four years afterwards. FY2025 performance share units were earned at 200 percent of target across all five named executives.
Reserve: Granted from the 2019 Plan reserve rather than a separate pool
2026 proxy statement
  • At 31 December 2025 Datadog reported 20,174,662 shares subject to outstanding options, restricted stock units and performance share units, 92,889,000 shares available for future grants and 23,194,000 employee stock purchase plan shares, for 136,258,321 shares reserved in total.
  • Outstanding awards were roughly 17.8 percent of the outstanding-plus-future-grant reserve at that date. That is a rough capacity ratio, not a statutory utilisation rate, because already-issued shares and subsequent evergreen additions complicate the denominator.
  • Grant velocity is high: 2,602,673 restricted stock units and performance share units were awarded in the first quarter of 2026 alone.
  • FY2025 stock-based compensation of $750.671 million equalled about 21.9 percent of revenue, which is a meaningful signal in both directions. It shows how much of the employee package is equity, and it is also a real dilution and accounting cost that shareholders watch.

Equity plan capacity and grant activity

$750.7M
FY2025 stock-based compensation
Up 31.6 percent from $570.336 million in FY2024, with $469.526 million charged to research and development.
108.3M
2019 Plan shares available at 31 March 2026
About $25.3 billion at the $233.85 snapshot price, which is a mechanical shares-times-price figure and not an accounting value or an issuance forecast.
17.0M
Unvested restricted stock units and performance share units
Outstanding at 31 March 2026, roughly $4.0 billion at the snapshot price. The split between employee and executive holders is not disclosed.
26.7M
Employee stock purchase plan shares available
At 31 March 2026, a large reserve relative to a roughly 8,100-person workforce.

Vesting — common reported employee schedule

Year 1
25%
+25% · annual tranche
Year 2
50%
+25% · annual tranche
Year 3
75%
+25% · annual tranche
Year 4
100%
+25% · annual tranche

Datadog publishes no universal cliff and cadence. The 2019 Plan states only that vesting is set in each award agreement and that termination generally stops vesting unless the agreement says otherwise. Named executive restricted stock units and performance share units granted in 2025 carry four-year service vesting, and employee reports commonly describe a four-year schedule with 25 percent at the first anniversary followed by periodic vesting. Some employee accounts describe a 0/33/33/33 shape on a refresh grant instead. The signed award notice is the only authority.

Eligibility by hierarchy level

  • The legal eligibility is broad and the grant practice is selective. The 2019 Plan can cover employees, directors and consultants, but the committee decides who receives an award and how large it is, and no filing promises a grant to anyone.
  • Modelled total grant values run about $0 to $20,000 at DD0, $80,000 to $180,000 at DD1, $180,000 to $350,000 at DD2, $350,000 to $800,000 at DD3, $600,000 to $1.40 million at DD4, $900,000 to $2 million at DD5, $1.50 million to $4 million at DD6, $3 million to $8 million at DD7, $5 million to $15 million at DD8 and $8 million to $25 million at DD9.
  • Those are total grant values over a multi-year award, not annual amounts. Divided by four they become the annualised equity figures used in the band table, which is the number that belongs next to a salary.
  • Refresh practice is the single largest unknown in an employee package. Datadog publishes no refresh policy, no refresh cadence and no eligibility threshold, and the only public signal is anonymous employee discussion of refresh eligibility after roughly two years.
  • The employee stock purchase plan authorises international subplans, but local tax treatment, foreign exchange handling, securities-law limits and payroll deduction mechanics are not disclosed for any country.

Indicative annual grant value by band — New York

BandAnnual value (USD)MedianShares at $233.85
DD0$2K$3K$3K~813
DD1$29K$48K$38K~122203
DD2$56K$94K$75K~241401
DD3$128K$213K$170K~545909
DD4$180K$300K$240K~7701,283
DD5$225K$375K$300K~9621,604
DD6$345K$575K$460K~1,4752,459
DD7$506K$844K$675K~2,1653,608
DD8$750K$1.25M$1.00M~3,2075,345
DD9$2.41M$4.01M$3.21M~10,30117,169

Annualized planning value (±25%), not the face value of every new-hire grant. Share equivalents use the $233.85 reference price at 26 August 2026, 13:54 UTC and ignore plan valuation rules and PSU performance. Highlighted rows are disclosed grant-date stock awards.

Named executive target equity

ExecutiveTargetUnits / structure
Olivier Pomel
Chief Executive Officer
$25.83M grant-date fair value127,805 restricted stock units plus 127,805 target performance share units granted on 1 April 2025. The FY2025 performance share units were earned at 200 percent of target, for 255,610 units.
Alexis Lê-Quôc
Chief Technology Officer
$19.13M grant-date fair value94,670 restricted stock units plus 94,670 target performance share units; 189,340 units earned at 200 percent of target.
David Obstler
Chief Financial Officer
$13.39M grant-date fair value66,269 restricted stock units plus 66,269 target performance share units; 132,538 units earned at 200 percent of target.
Adam Blitzer
Chief Operating Officer
$13.20M grant-date fair value65,322 restricted stock units plus 65,322 target performance share units; 130,644 units earned at 200 percent of target.
Sean Walters
Chief Revenue Officer
$12.25M grant-date fair value60,589 restricted stock units plus 60,589 target performance share units; 121,178 units earned at 200 percent of target, even though his cash bonus paid only 81 percent.
VerifiedThe employee stock purchase plan is the only equity component an employee controls the size of. Deductions run up to 15 percent of eligible earnings and shares are bought at 85 percent of the lower of the price at the offering start and the price on the purchase date, so a rising share price compounds the discount rather than eroding it. Datadog's careers page describes the 15 percent discount directly. Availability depends on whether a local subplan has been implemented in the employee's country, and that country list is not published.

Executive Compensation

FY2025 Summary Compensation Table values from the 2026 proxy statement filed on 29 April 2026. Salary is nearly flat across four of the five officers, so the entire spread is equity, and the equity figure is grant-date accounting value rather than money received.

CEO total — Olivier Pomel
$27.06M
Stock awards are 95.5% of the reported total; salary 2% and non-equity incentive 3%
96%
Salary $446K
Incentive $777K
Equity $25.83M
Salary$445,833
Cash incentive at 183% of a $425,000 target$777,251
Stock awards, grant-date fair value$25,831,947
All other compensation$450
Reported total$27,055,481

Reading the package

Stock awards were about 95.5 percent of Olivier Pomel's FY2025 reported total, salary about 1.6 percent and the cash incentive about 2.9 percent. Reported chief executive pay has risen from $11.64 million in FY2023 to $19.84 million in FY2024 and $27.06 million in FY2025, increases of 70.4 percent and 36.4 percent, driven almost entirely by the grant-date value of the annual award rather than by cash. What he actually realised in FY2025 was a different number again: the proxy exercise and vesting table shows about $166.8 million realised on exercising 1,358,856 options and about $19.0 million on 148,355 vesting stock awards.

CEO-to-median-employee ratio
131:1
Median employee $206,250 · Datadog identified a median employee under the SEC pay-ratio methodology at $206,250 of FY2025 total compensation and disclosed the resulting 131 to 1 ratio. The ratio is comparatively low for a large-cap software issuer, and the reason is the numerator's denominator: a $206,250 median employee is high, not a $27 million chief executive package being small..
Peer CEO comparison
Cloudflare · Matthew Prince · FY2025$60.55M
Cloudflare 2026 proxy statement; disclosed pay ratio 387:1
Datadog · Olivier Pomel · FY2025$27.06M
Datadog 2026 proxy statement; disclosed pay ratio 131:1
New Relic · Last disclosed public-company chief executive package · FY2023$23.21M
Final public-company proxy before the take-private; a stale period, not a current peer
Dynatrace · Rick McConnell · FY2026$21.23M
Dynatrace proxy statement; fiscal period differs from Datadog's
MongoDB · Dev Ittycheria · FY2026$16.27M
MongoDB transition-period disclosure; fiscal period differs

Datadog's chief executive total sits below Cloudflare's and above Dynatrace's and MongoDB's, but none of these are realised-pay comparisons and the fiscal periods, award designs and valuation assumptions all differ. The pay-ratio column is the more revealing comparison: Cloudflare's 387 to 1 against Datadog's 131 to 1 is mostly a statement about the two median employees, not about the two chief executives. One person appears on both sides of this table — Dev Ittycheria sits on Datadog's board while running MongoDB.


Named Executive Officers & Board

Datadog's senior team is unusually stable and unusually founder-heavy. The chief executive and the chief technology officer are both co-founders, both sit on the board, and both carry the same $445,833 salary and the same $425,000 bonus target. The only recent addition disclosed in the reviewed sources is the chief people officer, who joined in July 2024.

Olivier Pomel · Chief Executive Officer and co-founder$27.06M
Salary $446K · Cash incentive $777K · Stock $25.83M · Other $450 · Equity 95.5%
Alexis Lê-Quôc · Chief Technology Officer and co-founder$20.36M
Salary $446K · Cash incentive $777K · Stock $19.13M · Other $3K · Equity 94%
David Obstler · Chief Financial Officer$14.62M
Salary $446K · Cash incentive $777K · Stock $13.39M · Other $4K · Equity 91.6%
Adam Blitzer · Chief Operating Officer$14.43M
Salary $446K · Cash incentive $777K · Stock $13.20M · Other $2K · Equity 91.5%
Sean Walters · Chief Revenue Officer$13.10M
Salary $471K · Cash incentive $383K · Stock $12.25M · Other $3K · Equity 93.5%

Four of the five named executives were paid an identical $445,833 salary and an identical $777,251 cash incentive for FY2025, which makes the equity award the only differentiating cash-equivalent lever the committee used. The chief revenue officer is the exception on both counts: a slightly higher $470,833 salary, a 100 percent rather than 94 percent target, and a payout of 81 percent against the others' 183 percent, because he sits on a sales-channel plan rather than the company plan. His equity was still earned at 200 percent of target, so the two mechanisms genuinely disagreed about FY2025.

Board compensation framework

ElementAmountNotes
Annual director retainer$50,000Paid in cash to each non-employee director; employee directors receive no director pay.
Lead independent director$74,000Additional retainer, the largest single cash element in the director programme.
Audit Committee chair$25,000Member retainers are set lower; the audit chair carries the heaviest committee load.
Compensation Committee chair$20,000This committee approves the net new annual recurring revenue bonus plan and the annual executive equity grants.
Nominating and Governance Committee chair$12,000The smallest committee retainer in the published policy.
Annual equity awardShare award, amount set by the boardSeveral independent directors received 1,072-share awards on 15 June 2026. Equity is the dominant part of a Datadog director package.

Actual FY2025 director totals were $615,093 for Ami Vora, $339,898 for Dev Ittycheria, $334,898 for Julie Richardson, $332,398 for Michael Callahan, $318,398 for Shardul Shah and $315,898 for Titi Cole. Amit Agarwal and Matthew Jacobson received no FY2025 director compensation. The gap between the published cash retainers, which top out at $74,000, and totals above $300,000 shows how much of a Datadog director package is equity.

Regional heads and other officers

Kerry Acocella as General Counsel and Secretary, David Galloreese as Chief People Officer and Yanbing Li as Chief Product Officer are executive officers who were not named executives for FY2025, so no compensation table exists for any of them. Their pay is visible only through Section 16 share movements — Acocella sold 5,371 shares for about $1.26 million in June 2026 and Galloreese sold 4,013 shares for about $919,000 — which tells you something about vesting scale and nothing about salary. Regional leadership pay is not disclosed at all.


Insider Trades — SEC Forms 3/4/5

Datadog is Nasdaq-listed, so the governing record is SEC Section 16 Forms 3, 4 and 5 rather than any Indian exchange filing. The three months to 19 August 2026 were exceptionally heavy, with the chief executive, the chief technology officer and three directors all selling into a share price that ran from about $229 to about $287.

DatePersonTransactionSharesPriceValue
2026-08-19
Olivier Pomel
Chief Executive Officer and director
Sale
The last sale in the reviewed window, at a price about 18 percent below the early-August peak.
47,054$235.49$11.08M
2026-08-13
Matthew Jacobson
Director
Sale
The largest single director disposal in the window; he received no FY2025 director compensation.
59,424$252.42$15.00M
2026-08-13
Amit Agarwal
Director
Sale
Third of three 20,000-share lots in a fortnight, consistent with a scheduled plan.
20,000$249.32$4.99M
2026-08-10
Alexis Lê-Quôc
Chief Technology Officer and director
Sale
Same 53,912-share block size he sold on 8 July, again pointing to a fixed schedule.
53,912$253.36$13.66M
2026-08-10
Alexis Lê-Quôc
Chief Technology Officer and director
Exercise
Exercise of legacy pre-initial-public-offering options at a $10.74 strike, about 4 percent of the market price that day.
18,750$10.74$201K
2026-08-06
Amit Agarwal
Director
Sale
Second 20,000-share lot.
20,000$234.85$4.70M
2026-08-05
Olivier Pomel
Chief Executive Officer and director
Sale
The largest disposal in the window and the highest price in it, at the top of the summer range.
127,141$286.71$36.45M
2026-08-05
Olivier Pomel
Chief Executive Officer and director
Exercise
Legacy option exercise at a $10.74 strike on the same day as the sale above.
35,715$10.74$384K
2026-08-04
Michael Callahan
Director
Sale
Sold at the highest observed price in the window.
12,500$287.47$3.59M
2026-07-30
Amit Agarwal
Director
Sale
First of the three 20,000-share lots.
20,000$266.82$5.34M
2026-07-23
Olivier Pomel
Chief Executive Officer and director
Sale
Same 47,054-share block size as the 19 August sale.
47,054$244.79$11.52M
2026-07-20
Alexis Lê-Quôc
Chief Technology Officer and director
Sale
A smaller block than his other two sales in the window.
43,224$265.23$11.46M
2026-07-13
Olivier Pomel
Chief Executive Officer and director
Sale
The 127,141-share block recurs on 8 June, 13 July and 5 August, a monthly cadence.
127,141$259.00$32.93M
2026-07-08
Alexis Lê-Quôc
Chief Technology Officer and director
Sale
Matching block to the 10 August sale.
53,912$257.24$13.87M
2026-06-16
Olivier Pomel
Chief Executive Officer and director
Sale
An off-cadence block size between the recurring 47,054 and 127,141 lots.
84,698$232.30$19.68M
2026-06-15
Independent directors
Board
Award
Annual director share awards of 1,072 shares each. No award price is stated in the filing, so this is valued at the $233.91 same-day market price observed in another Datadog Form 4.
1,072$251K
2026-06-15
Kerry Acocella
General Counsel and Secretary
Sale
One of only two disposals in the window by an officer outside the named executive group.
5,371$233.91$1.26M
2026-06-12
Michael Callahan
Director
Sale
Nine times the size of his August sale and the second-largest disposal in the window.
112,500$231.60$26.06M
2026-06-11
Sean Walters
Chief Revenue Officer
Sale
The smallest named executive disposal in the window.
11,876$231.02$2.74M
2026-06-09
David Galloreese
Chief People Officer
Sale
The only public compensation signal of any kind for the chief people officer.
4,013$228.90$919K
2026-06-08
Olivier Pomel
Chief Executive Officer and director
Sale
First of the three 127,141-share monthly blocks.
127,141$231.69$29.46M
2026-06-08
David Obstler
Chief Financial Officer
Sale
Executed at the same price as the chief executive's block on the same day.
75,000$231.69$17.38M

Reading guide

Repeating block sizes point to scheduled plansPomel sold exactly 127,141 shares on 8 June, 13 July and 5 August and exactly 47,054 on 23 July and 19 August; Lê-Quôc sold exactly 53,912 twice. Repeating quantities on a monthly cadence are the signature of a Rule 10b5-1 plan, not of a reaction to news.
Options here are a legacy artefactBoth 2026 exercises struck at $10.74, a pre-initial-public-offering price roughly 4 percent of the market. Current Datadog grants use restricted stock units and performance share units; nobody hired recently is exercising anything.
Founders still hold and still sellThe chief executive and the chief technology officer between them disposed of about $149 million of stock in ten weeks. That is a function of two co-founder stakes meeting a rising share price, not a statement about the business.
Realised value dwarfs reported payThe FY2025 proxy shows Pomel realising about $166.8 million from exercising 1,358,856 options and about $19.0 million from 148,355 vesting awards, and Obstler about $13.7 million from 107,500 options and about $15.3 million from 118,832 vesting awards. The Summary Compensation Table totals of $27.06 million and $14.62 million describe grant-date accounting, not money received.

Benefits & Perks

Datadog runs a single global benefits page rather than country rewards portals, so the picture is the opposite of the pay picture: the global programme is well described and the country-level detail is almost entirely absent. What follows separates what Datadog actually says from what the local statutory floor guarantees.

United States

  • MedicalMedical, dental and vision cover. Listed on the careers benefits page. The insurer, plan tiers and employer contribution split are not published anywhere. [official]
  • Mental healthTen free appointments a year. Available to employees and dependants. This is one of the few benefit figures Datadog quantifies publicly. [official]
  • Retirement401(k) with an employer match. A match is advertised but the formula, cap and vesting schedule are not published. The only hard number anywhere is the $2,000 match certain named executives received in FY2025, disclosed in the proxy's all other compensation column. [official]
  • FamilyPaid gender-neutral parental leave after three months of service. Fertility, surrogacy and adoption support is offered where eligible. The number of weeks is not stated for the United States or anywhere else. [official]
  • Time offFlexible paid time off. No accrual and no published day count, which means there is no entitlement figure to negotiate against. [official]
  • EquityNew-hire restricted stock units and a 15 percent discount employee stock purchase plan. United States job postings advertise new-hire restricted stock units directly, which is more than most employers disclose. Grant size is not published at any level. [official]

Global programs

  • Mental healthTen free appointments for employees and dependants. Quantified on the careers benefits page and applied globally where eligible, which is unusual — most of Datadog's benefit statements carry no number at all. [official]
  • FamilyPaid gender-neutral parental leave after three months of service. The three-month service condition is stated globally. The number of weeks is not, in any market. [official]
  • FamilyFertility, surrogacy and adoption support. Offered where eligible. Local caps and providers are not published. [official]
  • HealthGender-affirming care wallets in eligible markets. Jurisdiction-specific limits and the eligible market list are not published. [official]
  • WorkHybrid work as the default. Only a small number of roles are designated fully remote, and team and role attendance expectations vary. This is a real constraint on a location-flexible offer. [official]
  • WorkRelocation, commuter, Wi-Fi, phone and equipment support. Offered where eligible, with no published limits. [official]
  • DevelopmentTraining and professional growth programmes. Advertised without a platform list or an annual reimbursement cap, so it cannot be valued. [official]
  • CommunityDatadog Cares volunteering programme. A company-supported community and volunteering programme. [official]
  • OfficeKitchens and catered lunch at eligible offices. Office specific, with no published list of which offices qualify. [official]
  • ReferralsEmployee referral bonus programme. Advertised on the careers site with no published amount. [official]

Benefit fields not publicly quantified

Datadog's benefits disclosure is a single global page rather than a set of country rewards portals, so almost every quantitative benefit question has the same answer: not publicly disclosed. That includes the 401(k) match formula and vesting, the parental leave week count in every country, the medical insurer and employer contribution split anywhere, the annual leave day count anywhere, the learning reimbursement cap, the referral bonus amount, and the entire India allowance package. The three numbers that do exist are ten mental health appointments, three months of service before parental leave, and the 15 percent employee stock purchase plan discount.


Performance Review & Pay Progression

Datadog discloses the executive review calendar precisely and the employee review process not at all. The compensation committee reviewed named executive salaries in February 2025 with increases effective 1 March, and made the annual executive equity grants on 1 April 2025. Nothing equivalent is published for anyone else.

Not publicly disclosed

The employee rating scale, its labels and the distribution across buckets are not publicly disclosed.
Whether a bell curve or forced distribution is used at all is not publicly disclosed.
The employee appraisal cycle dates, the effective date of merit increases and any mid-year correction window are not publicly disclosed.
The promotion committee and calibration mechanics, and whether individual contributor and manager reviews differ, are not publicly disclosed.
The typical hike by rating, the merit matrix and any time-in-band rule are not publicly disclosed.
Probation and confirmation terms are country and contract specific and are not published for any market.
No company-wide average hike percentage, pay freeze, salary cut, campus offer revision or fresher joining change was announced in any reviewed primary source between 2024 and the August 2026 report date. Absence from the reviewed sources is not proof that no internal action occurred.

Modeled promotion planning timeline

BandYears to next scopePromotion hikeStatus
DD01–3 years to DD1Not disclosedModeled planning interval
DD11–3 years to DD2Not disclosedModeled planning interval
DD22–4 years to DD3Not disclosedModeled planning interval
DD32–4 years to DD4Not disclosedModeled planning interval
DD43–5 years to DD5Not disclosedModeled planning interval
DD53–5 years to DD6Not disclosedModeled planning interval
DD6Opportunity-drivenNot disclosedModeled planning interval
DD7Opportunity-drivenNot disclosedModeled planning interval
DD8Opportunity-drivenNot disclosedModeled planning interval
DD9Board and succession drivenNot disclosedModeled planning interval

Equity timing has better visibility than cash at the executive layer and none at the employee layer. The 2025 named executive grants were dated 1 April and salary increases 1 March, following a February committee review. For employees there is no published grant date, no published refresh cadence and no published eligibility threshold, which makes the refresh question the single most important thing to ask in an offer conversation and the single thing no public source can answer.

Pay progression evidence

Modelled progression, not Datadog policy: DD0 to DD1 typically takes one to three years for an 8 to 15 percent base increase; DD2 to DD3 takes two to four years for 8 to 15 percent; DD3 to DD4 takes two to four years for 10 to 18 percent, and anonymous employee discussion suggests roughly three years is typical to reach senior; DD4 to DD5 takes three to five years for 10 to 20 percent; and DD6 and above is opportunity-driven and individualised. Anonymous reports describe 5 to 10 percent increases without promotion and refresh eligibility after year two, including one account of a 0/33/33/33 refresh shape. These are individual anecdotes. At Datadog the cash step between levels is usually smaller than the equity step, so a promotion negotiated on base alone leaves most of the value on the table.


H-1B / LCA Visa Footprint — United States

Datadog is a mid-volume but high-wage H-1B sponsor concentrated in New York. Labour condition application wages are proffered base salary only: they exclude restricted stock units, bonus, commission and sign-on, so a $205,000 median here sits against employee-reported total compensation more than twice that at the same levels.

FY2025 certified applications
130
All certified in the source dataset with no denials reported; 119 individual wage records were visible for distribution analysis.
FY2025 median proffered base
$205,000
The average was $204,822, up from $193,559 in FY2024 and $193,046 in FY2023.
FY2025 petition decisions
78 approvals, 0 denials
Against 54 approvals in FY2024 and 38 in FY2023, each also with no denials in the source.
FY2026 to 18 August
66 applications
48 petition decisions with 47 approvals and one denial, an approval rate of about 97.9 percent and the first denial in the visible record.

Dataset summary

DatasetResultInterpretation
MyVisaJobs employer profile130 FY2025 labour condition applications and 78 approved petitionsAlso the source for the cumulative worksite distribution and the sponsored-occupation mix. Counts are cumulative across years rather than FY2025 only.
H1BData.info Datadog search119 visible FY2025 records at a $205,000 median and a $204,822 averageThe distribution runs about 52 percent above $200,000, 39 percent between $150,000 and $200,000 and 9 percent between $100,000 and $150,000.
Historical comparison$193,046 average in FY2023 and $193,559 in FY2024Essentially flat for two years then a 5.8 percent step up in FY2025, which is a useful proxy for United States technical base drift when nothing else is published.

City-level H-1B wage history

CityP25MedianP75Records
New York, New York
The headquarters worksite and by far the largest concentration. Percentiles are approximated from visible FY2025 filing rows rather than supplied by the source.
$183K$220,000$253K186
Boston, Massachusetts
The second-largest worksite and, unusually, a higher median than New York, which reflects a senior-weighted role mix rather than a Boston premium.
$214K$239,200$244K26
San Francisco, California
A very small sample with a broad role mix, so the percentile spread from $152,500 to $253,000 is unstable and should not be read as a range.
$153K$253,000$253K9
Denver, Colorado
Two records only, both at the same wage. Directional evidence that Denver sits below the coastal sites, and nothing more.
$221K$221,000$221K2

All-years aggregates. P25/P75 are rounded reconstruction values marked modeled; medians and record counts are the stronger fields.

Selected title / worksite records

TitleWorksiteProffered wageNotes
Senior Staff Software EngineerNew York$350,000The highest individual base in the visible FY2025 record, above the top of the official $272,000 to $340,000 Senior Staff posting range.
Senior Software EngineerNew York$155,000 to $280,000Three New York records at $155,000, $230,000 and $280,000 show how wide one title runs; the official posting range is $192,000 to $240,000.
Manager I, EngineeringNew York, Boston and San Francisco$220,000 to $260,000Five records across three cities, with Boston at $244,000 and San Francisco at $253,000. First-line engineering management sits inside the Staff engineer band, not above it.
Manager II, EngineeringNew York$271,500Consistent with the official Engineering Manager II posting range of $252,000 to $315,000.
Director, Product Management and Director, Product OperationsNew York$295,000 and $301,600The only director-level base evidence of any kind in the public record.
Software EngineerNew York and Boston$142,800 to $145,000The entry technical floor in the visa record, close to the employee-reported $144,000 Software Engineer I base.
Applied Scientist and Applied Scientist IINew York$145,000 and $183,000Machine learning roles enter at ordinary engineering wages rather than at a premium in this dataset.
Product Designer II and Product Manager IISan Francisco and New York$152,500 and $180,000Design and product roles at the second level sit below engineering at the same level in these records.

Reading the data correctly

  • A labour condition application wage is a proffered base salary floor, not total compensation. At Datadog that distinction is unusually large because equity carries most of the package above entry level.
  • Certification of a labour condition application is not the same as approval of a USCIS petition, and neither is the same as a visa being issued.
  • Worksite counts in the aggregator profile are cumulative across years, so the 186 New York records are not 186 FY2025 filings.
  • Percentiles here are approximated from visible filing rows rather than published by the source, and the San Francisco and Denver samples are too small for a percentile to mean anything.
  • Filings can be amended, duplicated across procedural stages, or associated with a later role or location change, so an individual row is a data point about an offer rather than about a person.
  • The dataset is most useful for two things: confirming that Datadog's official title sequence is real, and sanity-checking a United States base salary. It says nothing about pay outside the United States.

Key Nuances & Insights

01The DD codes are a research device, not a Datadog grade

Datadog publishes titles and base ranges in individual job postings but no enterprise grade catalogue. DD0 to DD9 is a normalisation of those titles built for comparison. Quoting a DD number back at a Datadog recruiter would identify you as someone reading a third-party model.

02The base ranges are real and unusually generous to a candidate

Four current United States postings publish exact base bands: $192,000 to $240,000 for senior, $244,000 to $305,000 for staff, $272,000 to $340,000 for senior staff and $252,000 to $315,000 for engineering manager II. That is a genuine anchor most employers do not give you, and it is the strongest single piece of leverage in a Datadog conversation.

03Equity, not bonus, is the level-to-level differentiator

Annualised stock in reported United States packages runs about $38,300 at Software Engineer I, $75,400 at Software Engineer II, $179,000 at senior and $289,000 at staff, moving from about 21 percent of the package to about 51 percent. The cash bonus barely moves across the same span. Negotiating a Datadog technical offer on base alone concedes the majority of the value.

04The Senior Staff posting pays more than the Manager II posting

Datadog's own current postings put the Senior Staff engineer band at $272,000 to $340,000 and Engineering Manager II at $252,000 to $315,000, and visa records place Manager I at $220,000 to $260,000, inside the Staff engineer band. There is no cash penalty for staying on the technical ladder, and at the top of the band there is a premium.

05Paris is Datadog's largest offshore site and it is a build site

France holds about 34 percent of the non-US workforce and the 10-K names Paris alongside New York as a primary research and development concentration. Applying a generic EMEA delivery-centre discount to Paris misreads what the office does, even though the calibrated pay factors are genuinely well below New York.

06Bangalore is commercial and support weighted, not an engineering mirror

The public role evidence in Bangalore points to go-to-market, support, customer success and operations. A 67-profile third-party sample averages about ₹3.5 million across all functions with a ₹2.25 million to ₹13.48 million spread. A Bangalore software-engineering band table is partly hypothetical unless checked against a specific written offer.

07The geographic gap does not close as you go up

Offshore markets at product companies usually converge toward the anchor at senior levels. Datadog's two-point evidence shows the opposite drift: Paris runs 0.46 of New York total compensation at Software Engineer II and 0.41 at senior, London 0.61 and 0.56, Lisbon 0.43 and 0.37. That is why this report uses flat city factors instead of interpolating a convergence that the data does not show.

08Sales and engineering carry risk in different instruments

An account executive puts 50 to 100 percent of base into commission and almost nothing into equity risk. An engineer puts almost nothing into bonus and half the package into a share price. Comparing a sales salary to an engineering salary at the same nominal level is comparing two different products.

09The two executive incentive systems disagreed in FY2025

The corporate net new annual recurring revenue plan paid 183 percent of target while the chief revenue officer's sales-channel plan paid 81 percent, in the same fiscal year at the same company. Yet every named executive's performance share units were earned at 200 percent of target. Which mechanism a role sits under matters more than the headline target percentage.

10The 131 to 1 ratio is a statement about the median employee

Datadog's chief executive was paid $27.06 million, well into large-cap territory, and the ratio is still only 131 to 1 because the median employee is at $206,250. Cloudflare's comparable ratio is 387 to 1. A low pay ratio at a software company usually means the workforce is senior and well paid, not that the chief executive is modest.

11Reported executive pay and realised executive pay are different numbers

The $27.06 million chief executive total is 95.5 percent grant-date accounting value. The FY2025 exercise and vesting table shows about $166.8 million realised on option exercises and about $19.0 million on vesting awards. Neither number is wrong; they measure different things, and the proxy headline is the less informative of the two.

12Refresh grants are the biggest unpriced variable in an offer

Datadog publishes no refresh policy, cadence or eligibility threshold. Employee accounts mention refresh eligibility after roughly year two and one describes a 0/33/33/33 shape. Since the new-hire grant is the number in the offer letter and the refresh is the number that determines year five, this gap is where most of the uncertainty in a Datadog package lives.

13The options in the insider record are archaeology

Both 2026 option exercises struck at $10.74, a 2012-plan price from before the 2019 initial public offering. No current employee is receiving options. Reading the Form 4 record as evidence that Datadog grants options would be a straightforward mistake.

14Stock-based compensation is 21.9 percent of revenue

FY2025 stock-based compensation of $750.671 million against $3.427 billion of revenue cuts both ways. It confirms that employee equity is substantial and broadly used, and it is also a dilution and margin item that investors press on, which is a structural reason grant sizes are unlikely to expand indefinitely.

Research control

Datadog pays at the top of the observability and infrastructure software market on the technical ladder and near the middle of it at the executive layer. The New York senior engineer anchor of about $410,000 total compensation and staff at about $572,000 sit alongside the large-cap technology market rather than below it, and the official base ranges are competitive with anything published by a company of this size. At the top, the $27.06 million chief executive package sits below Cloudflare's $60.55 million and above Dynatrace's $21.23 million and MongoDB's $16.27 million, on fiscal periods that do not align. The distinctive feature is the shape rather than the level: cash bonus is close to zero on the technical ladder, so Datadog concentrates more of its differentiation into equity than most of its peers do.

Evidence classification

LabelMeaningExamples and permitted use
VerifiedA Datadog SEC filing, an official Datadog job posting, the Datadog careers benefits page, or a government or central bank rule.Executive pay, the bonus plan mechanics, equity plan terms and reserves, headcount, revenue, four United States base salary bands, statutory benefits and the foreign exchange snapshot.
ReportedA named third-party dataset with observable records — Levels.fyi, 6figr, RepVue, Glassdoor, Indeed and the visa aggregators.The New York total compensation anchors, the Paris, London, Lisbon, Bangalore, Sydney, Singapore and Tokyo observations, and the H-1B wage distributions.
ModeledThe New York anchor multiplied by a city calibration factor and the foreign exchange snapshot, inside a planning envelope.Every city without a direct observation, the DD7 through DD9 band rows, the annualised equity split at every level and every bonus target below the named executive layer.
Not publicly disclosedNo source in the research bundle supports a figure.Recorded as such rather than estimated, particularly across benefits and the employee review process.

Explicit “Not publicly disclosed” index

Any official numeric band, grade or level identifier, and any title-to-grade mapping
Salary range minimum, midpoint and maximum for any role not currently posted
The bonus target matrix and payout history for every population below the named executive officers
The employee equity grant table, refresh policy, refresh cadence and eligibility threshold by band or country
City-by-city employee headcount, and the company-wide attrition rate for any year
The employee rating scale, bell curve, appraisal calendar, merit matrix and promotion committee mechanics
The 401(k) match formula and vesting, and the medical insurer, plan tiers and employer contribution split in every market
Parental leave week counts and annual leave day counts in every country, including the United States
The entire India allowance package: leave counts, National Pension System contribution, insurance limits, meal benefit and transport policy
Compensation for the general counsel, chief people officer, chief product officer and every regional head
Sales quota, commission rate, accelerator and draw structures
Any lateral-hire premium against internal promotees at the same level

Known gaps and diligence before relying on a cell

  1. 1The named executive and chief executive rows are deliberately excluded from the band table and carried in the executive section only. They are United States proxy disclosures for five specific people, and the report's location factors would otherwise multiply a $27.06 million chief executive package by 0.17 to produce a Bangalore figure that describes nobody. The source bundle made the same choice by flagging those rows as global references that are never location-adjusted.
  2. 2City factors are flat across the ladder and the optional top-of-ladder factors are omitted everywhere. The bundle's own calibration is a single multiplier per city, and the only two-point evidence available — Paris, London and Lisbon at Software Engineer II and senior — shows the ratio flat to slightly declining with seniority rather than converging on New York. Interpolating a convergence would have invented a pattern the data contradicts.
  3. 3Total compensation cells are rebuilt from base plus target bonus plus annualised equity, with no employer benefit load of any kind added. The source bundle did not add one either, but the split between the base and total factors in each city is asserted by the bundle rather than derived, and only Paris, London and Lisbon have enough direct observations to check it.
  4. 4Equity is annualised by dividing a modelled total grant by four. The bundle is explicit that this ignores front-loading, refresh overlap, forfeiture, share price movement and tax, and Datadog publishes no vesting curve that would allow a better method.
  5. 5Auckland is not a verified Datadog office. The bundle includes it purely as a New Zealand market reference and says so; it is retained here on the same basis and should not be read as evidence of a Datadog operation in New Zealand.
  6. 6The DD7 to DD9 rows have no direct Datadog pay observation of any kind. They are interpolations between the evidenced director band and the disclosed named executive floor, and they are the least reliable rows in the table.
  7. 7Third-party sources measure incompatible things. Glassdoor India observations sit materially below 6figr technical-role observations, and sales databases report on-target earnings where salary sites report base. This report records the conflict and uses role-specific anchors rather than averaging measures that are not the same quantity.
  8. 8Datadog discloses no geographic revenue split in any reviewed source, so no regional revenue panel appears in this report rather than a fabricated one.
  9. 9No company-wide 2024 to 2026 salary hike percentage, pay freeze, salary cut, campus offer revision or off-cycle correction was located in any reviewed primary source. Absence from the reviewed sources is not proof that no internal action occurred.

FX rates used — 1 USD equals, snapshot 2026-08-26

95.4216
INR
0.857
EUR
0.7337
GBP
1.3918
AUD
1.2698
SGD
159.071
JPY
2.9742
ILS
1.6781
NZD
1383.4862
KRW

Single-date conversion layer for comparability; it ignores payroll-date FX, tax, purchasing power, benefits valuation and hedging. Compensation intelligence, not legal, tax, investment, immigration or employment advice.

Source register — 18 sources

10-K FY2025Datadog Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025 · United States Securities and Exchange Commission · 2026-02-26. Headcount, country count, non-US and France workforce shares, research and development and sales headcount, revenue, stock-based compensation, office footprint and total shares reserved.
DEF 14A 2026Datadog 2026 Definitive Proxy Statement · United States Securities and Exchange Commission · 2026-04-29. FY2025 named executive compensation, the CEO pay ratio and median employee, board compensation and retainers, bonus plan mechanics and attainment, and the 50/50 restricted stock unit and performance share unit design.
DEF 14A 2025Datadog 2025 Definitive Proxy Statement · United States Securities and Exchange Commission · 2025-04-18. FY2024 executive bonus payout of about 93 percent of target and the prior-year compensation comparison.
10-Q Q1 2026Datadog Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 31 March 2026 · United States Securities and Exchange Commission · 2026-05-07. 2019 Plan and employee stock purchase plan reserves, unvested award balances and quarterly award activity.
2019 EIPDatadog 2019 Equity Incentive Plan exhibit · United States Securities and Exchange Commission · 2019-09-06. Eligible classes, permitted award types, the option and appreciation-right price floor and award-by-award vesting authority.
2019 ESPPDatadog 2019 Employee Stock Purchase Plan exhibit · United States Securities and Exchange Commission · 2019-09-06. Payroll deduction limit, the 85 percent lower-of-two-prices purchase formula, offering period length and international subplan authority.
Q2 2026 resultsDatadog second quarter 2026 financial results release · Datadog, Inc. · 2026-08-06. Quarterly revenue of $1.12 billion up 36 percent, operating and free cash flow and the liquidity position.
Careers benefitsDatadog global benefits page · Datadog, Inc. · 2026-08-26. Health, mental health, parental leave, family forming, hybrid work, learning, referral, retirement and the 15 percent employee stock purchase plan discount.
Job postingsCurrent Datadog United States job postings · Datadog, Inc. · 2026-08-26. Official base salary ranges for Technical Support Engineer I, Senior, Staff and Senior Staff Software Engineer, Engineering Manager II, sales engineering, customer success, payroll, financial planning and compensation roles.
Levels.fyiLevels.fyi Datadog salary and software engineer records · Levels.fyi · 2026-08-26. The New York total compensation anchors at four engineering levels and the direct Paris, London and Lisbon observations.
Market observations6figr, RepVue, Glassdoor, Indeed and Blind Datadog observations · Third-party salary and community platforms · 2026-08-26. Bangalore role and range observations, Singapore account executive on-target earnings, Sydney support and sales engineering ranges, Tokyo commercial ranges and the anecdotal refresh and merit reports.
MyVisaJobsMyVisaJobs Datadog employer profile · MyVisaJobs · 2026-08-18. Labour condition application and petition counts by fiscal year, approval outcomes, worksite distribution and the sponsored-occupation mix.
H1BDataH1BData.info Datadog filing records · H1BData.info · 2026-08-26. The FY2025 wage distribution, the $205,000 median and the individual title and worksite wage rows.
Forms 4SEC Section 16 insider transaction filings for Datadog · United States Securities and Exchange Commission · 2026-08-19. Insider sales, legacy option exercises and the June 2026 director share awards.
StatutoryEmployees' Provident Fund Organisation, Fair Work Ombudsman and Australian Taxation Office · Government of India and Government of Australia · 2026-08-26. Indian provident fund contribution rates, Australian annual leave under the National Employment Standards and the 12 percent Superannuation Guarantee rate.
FX snapshotEuropean Central Bank euro foreign exchange reference rates · European Central Bank · 2026-08-26. Every local currency conversion in this report, cross-rated through the euro.
Share priceDDOG market price snapshot · Nasdaq · 2026-08-26. The $233.85 share price at 13:54 UTC used for share-equivalent maths. It is a snapshot, not a valuation.
Peer proxiesCloudflare, Dynatrace, MongoDB and New Relic chief executive compensation disclosures · United States Securities and Exchange Commission · 2026-08-26. The peer chief executive comparison, across fiscal periods that do not align with Datadog's.

Recent News & Workforce Trend

Datadog's compensation year has been driven by growth and by the sheer scale of its equity programme rather than by any announced pay action. No company-wide salary hike, freeze or restructuring appears in any reviewed primary source.

~5,200
FY2023 employees
No attrition rate disclosed for this or any other year.
~6,500
FY2024 employees
Up about 25 percent year on year; stock-based compensation was $570.336 million.
~8,100
FY2025 employees
Up about 24.6 percent across 35 countries, with about 3,900 in research and development and 3,600 in sales and marketing.

Datadog added roughly 1,600 people in FY2025 after roughly 1,300 in FY2024, growth of about a quarter in each year, and stock-based compensation grew faster still at 31.6 percent. That combination — headcount up a quarter, equity cost up a third — is the clearest available signal that new hires are being brought in on substantial grants. Datadog publishes no attrition rate and no city-level headcount, so the only geographic quantities in the filings are the 44 percent non-US share and France's roughly 34 percent share of that.

26 Aug 2026
No company-wide pay action announced in any reviewed source since 2024

No average hike percentage, effective date, pay freeze, salary cut, campus offer revision or fresher joining change appears in any reviewed filing or release. Absence from the reviewed sources is not proof that no internal action occurred.

Source-search result across reviewed primary sources
19 Aug 2026
Ten weeks of heavy insider selling into a rising share price

The chief executive, the chief technology officer and three directors disposed of shares between 8 June and 19 August 2026 at prices from about $229 to about $287, in repeating block sizes consistent with scheduled trading plans.

SEC Forms 4
6 Aug 2026
Second-quarter revenue of $1.12 billion, up 36 percent

Operating cash flow was $316 million and free cash flow $279 million against about $5.0 billion of cash and securities. Growth and liquidity support continued hiring and grant capacity but carry no payout promise to employees.

Datadog Q2 2026 results release
7 May 2026
Q1 2026 filing shows 2.6 million units granted in a single quarter

2,602,673 restricted stock units and performance share units were awarded during the quarter, against 108,289,634 shares still available and 17,034,472 unvested units outstanding.

Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 31 March 2026
29 Apr 2026
FY2025 proxy discloses a $27.06 million chief executive package at 131 to 1

The package was 95.5 percent stock awards. The proxy also confirmed the 94 percent bonus target, the 183 percent FY2025 payout and the 50/50 restricted stock unit and performance share unit design for named executives.

2026 Definitive Proxy Statement
29 Apr 2026
FY2025 performance share units earned at 200 percent of target

All five named executives earned double their target units, including the chief revenue officer whose cash bonus paid only 81 percent. The two incentive mechanisms disagreed sharply about the same year.

2026 Definitive Proxy Statement
26 Feb 2026
FY2025 10-K reports about 8,100 employees across 35 countries

About 44 percent of the workforce sat outside the United States and roughly 34 percent of that non-US population was in France. No attrition rate was disclosed.

Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025
31 Dec 2025
Stock-based compensation reaches $750.7 million, 21.9 percent of revenue

Up 31.6 percent from $570.336 million in FY2024, with $469.526 million charged to research and development. Equity cost is growing faster than headcount.

Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025
1 Apr 2025
Annual named executive grants made on a 50/50 restricted stock unit and performance share unit split

Olivier Pomel received 127,805 restricted stock units and 127,805 target performance share units for a $25.832 million grant-date fair value; the other named executives received awards from $12.246 million to $19.135 million.

2026 Definitive Proxy Statement
1 Mar 2025
Named executive salary increases take effect after a February committee review

The compensation committee reviewed executive salaries in February 2025 with increases effective 1 March. No equivalent calendar is published for any other employee population.

2026 Definitive Proxy Statement
31 Dec 2024
FY2024 executive bonus pays about 93 percent of target

Net new annual recurring revenue attainment was about 93 percent and the non-GAAP operating income target was met, so the plan paid near target — half the FY2025 outcome on the same design.

2025 Definitive Proxy Statement
8 Jul 2024
David Galloreese joins as Chief People Officer

An experienced technology-sector human resources executive took over global people strategy and compensation governance. He is not a named executive officer, so his own pay is not disclosed.

Company announcement
Last updated 2026-08-27