Engineering builds and runs Datum’s products, from the software and release cycle to the physical and logical capacity, security, and operations.
We hope that Datum becomes a core enabler of an ecosystem, but our fundamental focus is delivering a reliable platform. We hold ourselves to an “in service to” mindset in which every component is something other teams — and other entire companies — build on top of.
What we work on
The platform spans a small number of deep technical areas:
- Infrastructure / Backbone Connectivity
- Data Plane
- Control Plane & APIs
- AX/DX & Forward Engineering
Most engineers work across more than one of these areas in order to accomplish their goals.
How we work
AX > DX > HX. We believe the primary user of our infrastructure is no longer a person. Even though the exact qualities of this experience are evolving, we’ve centered around agentic experience as a first priority, with developer experience second and then human (operator) experience third. These priorities shape how we design APIs, write docs, and structure the CLI.
Public by default. Datum is AGPLv3. Code, RFCs, design discussions, and most of what would be internal at other companies happens in the open. If you ship good work here, you can point anyone — or any agent — to it.
Run what you build. The team that ships our services operates it. On-call, capacity, and incident response sit inside engineering, not in a separate operations function.
Accountabilities
- Build and run the product
- Release management
- Physical and logical capacity
- Security and compliance
- Documentation and OSS stewardship
- Developer (and agent) experience