Kevin Conaway
Staff Software Engineer at Datadog
Vienna, Virginia, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolKevin Conaway is a Staff Software Engineer with 11 years of experience designing and operating large-scale, cloud-native distributed systems for companies like Datadog, Walmart Global Tech, and Zoomdata. He specializes in backend and DevOps work—contributing to high-profile open source projects such as Datadog Agent and Apache Druid—where he's improved telemetry, reliability, and event processing at production scale. Kevin combines hands-on coding (HTTP transaction handlers, system-probe integration, AppenderatorDriver refactors) with operational rigor, introducing retryable forwarders and configuration hardening. He has a strong track record of leading architecture shifts—from monolith to microservices to streaming data platforms—while mentoring teams and improving CI/build performance. Based in Vienna, VA, he pairs deep systems pragmatism with practical security and deployment sensibilities. Outside of work he’s a problem solver who unwinds as a dedicated BBQ enthusiast, a detail that hints at his patient, methodical approach to complex engineering problems.
11 years of coding experience
16 years of employment as a software developer
BS, Computer Science, BS, Computer Science at Saint Joseph's University
Stackoverflow
30,261reputation
6.2mreached
301answers
6questions
jar
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java
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logging
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spring
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rmi
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regex
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Github Skills (65)
realtime10
testing10
distributed-tracing10
http10
apache-druid10
javas10
chef-client10
real-time-data10
stream-processing10
monitoring10
jar10
cxf10
api10
data-processing10
yaml10
Programming languages (14)
Github contributions (5)
DataDog/datadog-agent
Jun 2019 - Aug 2020
Main repository for Datadog Agent
Role in this project:
Back-end & DevOps Engineer
Back-end & DevOps EngineerContributions:49 reviews, 16 commits, 33 PRs in 1 year 2 months
Contributions summary:Kevin contributed significantly to the Datadog Agent, focusing on back-end and infrastructure aspects. Their work includes modifying configuration files, updating Upstart scripts for system probe management, and integrating DNS encoding within the collector. They also implemented HTTP transaction event handlers and refactored the process agent to use a forwarder for submitting payloads, introducing retry capabilities.
golangdatadog-agentagentobservabilitypmm
DataDog/chef-datadog
Jul 2019 - Oct 2019
Chef cookbook for Datadog Agent & Integrations
Role in this project:DevOps Engineer
DevOps EngineerContributions:9 commits, 5 PRs, 6 pushes in 2 months
Contributions summary:Kevin primarily contributed to improving the Datadog Chef cookbook by adding and modifying system probe configuration. They enabled the consumption of `extra_config` parameters, added test cases for system-probe specifications, and corrected ruby formatting issues to ensure code quality. They also modified the `system-probe.yaml` template and adjusted file ownership and permissions.
datadog-agentcookbookagentintegrationschef-resource
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