Manager, Global Entity Management

About the role

Datadog employs roughly 8,100 people across 35 countries through global subsidiaries, all under a Nevada parent. Some are operating companies. Others came to us through acquisitions. We open in new markets often enough that the structure is always moving, and we manage it in Diligent Entities. This role owns it.

The work is entity formation and maintenance in many jurisdictions, corporate records and statutory filings, and daily coordination with the Finance, Tax and People teams. You will deal directly with government agencies, registries, registered agents and local counsel around the world. You will also be the person the rest of the company asks whenever a question touches our corporate structure.

The role sits in Legal Operations, and you will report to our Senior Director, Legal Operations, who has supported entity management operations in the past. Our Associate General Counsel, Corporate & Securities owns the work product and sets the standards for entity management and for our securities filings. Legal Operations runs the function; Corporate & Securities owns the substance.

The placement also gives you breadth. Legal Operations covers legal technology and systems, process design, outside counsel and spend operations, restricted party and sanctions screening, product legal support, and the department's AI work. We expect to cross-train you across those areas over time, and to cross-train colleagues into entity work. Entity management will remain the substantial majority of this job.

On AI in particular, Legal Operations is where most of that work happens for the legal department. We look at how our current tools could be used better, we assess new ones, and we look for ways to extend AI into systems that were never built with it in mind. If you look at a manual process and wonder whether software should be doing it, there is room here for that.

What you will do

Global entity management: the core of the role

• Entity lifecycle. Manage formations, foreign qualifications, branch registrations, conversions, mergers, dissolutions, liquidations and deregistrations for our US and international entities, working with outside service providers and local counsel in each jurisdiction.
• Good standing. Keep every entity in good standing wherever it operates. That covers annual reports and returns, statutory filings and business licenses. It also covers records for registered agents and agents for service of process, and the local compliance requirements that differ by country.
• Government agencies and registries. Deal directly with company registries, tax authorities, chambers of commerce and other government bodies on filings, registrations, certificates and inquiries, some of which need regular follow-up.
• Compliance calendar. Own the global entity compliance calendar. Know what is due, where and when, and flag it early rather than relying on a service provider's reminder.
• Directors, officers and authority. Track director and officer appointments and resignations, maintain signature and delegation of authority records, and prepare powers of attorney, incumbency certificates and secretary's certificates. Keep internal systems current and make sure the people who need to know about a change in signing authority are told.
• Portfolio rationalization. Review the legacy and dormant entities we hold, including those that came in through acquisitions. Form a view on which should be maintained, consolidated or wound down, then carry out the plan.

Corporate records and governance

• Corporate records. Maintain minute books, statutory registers, organizational charts and entity records worldwide, in physical and electronic form, so the portfolio stays audit-ready.
• Governance documents. Draft board and stockholder resolutions, written consents, minutes for subsidiary matters, and organizational documents such as articles, bylaws and operating agreements, in support of routine governance matters and corporate transactions, for attorney review.
• Document requests. Turn around internal and external requests for certificates of good standing, certified copies, apostilles and legalizations. These usually block something, so speed matters.

KYC and due diligence support

• Incoming requests. Respond to and manage Know Your Customer (KYC), Ultimate Beneficial Ownership (UBO) and related diligence requests from banks, financial partners, customers and other stakeholders.
• Supporting documentation. Compile and maintain the entity ownership, formation and governance documentation those requests rely on.

Working with Finance, Tax and People

Entity decisions are rarely made by Legal alone, so a large share of this role is coordination.

• Tax. Support tax-driven entity changes, restructurings and intercompany arrangements, and provide the corporate approvals, resolutions and records they require.
• Finance and Treasury. Support statutory audits, bank account openings and closures, and signatory changes. Supply the entity data behind financial reporting and audit requests.
• People. Work with the People team when we open in a new country. That covers employer registrations, local entity setup and the corporate steps that have to happen before anyone can be hired or paid.
• Across the company. Be the reliable answer when Procurement, Sales, Real Estate or anyone else needs to know which entity to use, or how Datadog is structured.

Systems, data and process

• Diligent Entities. Own Diligent Entities as our system of record, covering data integrity, configuration and reporting. You will be the internal expert who trains others on it.
• Data quality. Run periodic audits of entity records, fix records where the data has drifted, and get the register to a point where it can be trusted without a manual check.
• Process. Build and maintain the trackers, workflows and standard operating procedures the function runs on, and document them well enough that someone else can pick them up.
• Automation and AI. Work with the wider Legal Operations team to automate the repetitive parts of entity work, and help assess where AI tools earn their place, both here and elsewhere in the department. Entity management is full of high-volume, rules-based work, which makes it a good place to test them. No prior AI experience is needed. Curiosity and judgment about where AI does and does not belong matter more.

Securities support

Supporting work, learnable on the job, performed for and supervised by our Associate General Counsel, Corporate & Securities.

• Section 16. Prepare, file and track Forms 3, 4 and 5 for our Section 16 officers and directors, and maintain the supporting ownership records.
• Forms 144 and 10b5-1. Prepare and file Forms 144 and administer the mechanics of Rule 10b5-1 plan adoptions, modifications and terminations.
• Entity data for reporting. Supply the entity information behind our periodic SEC filings, including the subsidiary list filed with the Form 10-K.
• Board support. Support board and committee matters as needed. Board and committee administration sits with our Corporate & Securities group.

Your team and the wider function

• Your direct report. Manage, develop and set priorities for one Corporate Paralegal, and bring them along on the entity work as you standardize it.
• Shared services. Legal Operations runs as a shared services team. You will be cross-trained across other Legal Operations workstreams, and colleagues will be cross-trained into entity work, so the team can cover for each other and hold consistent standards.

Who you are

What we need

• Seven or more years of hands-on entity management experience, with substantial time on a multi-jurisdictional portfolio, whether in-house at a multinational, at a law firm or at a corporate services provider.
• Practical experience with entity formation and ongoing maintenance in multiple countries, including foreign qualification, good standing, annual filings, registered agents and local statutory requirements.
• Direct experience dealing with government agencies, company registries and regulators on corporate filings. You have chased a registry, fixed a rejected filing, and learned how long these things take.
• A track record of working with internal partners outside Legal, such as Finance, Tax and People, where the work only lands if the coordination is good.
• Proficiency with an entity management platform. We use Diligent Entities. If you have used a comparable system and will become an expert in ours, that works too.
• Strong document and spreadsheet skills. Legal and Finance work in Word and Excel, and Excel in particular carries a lot of the tracking and reporting in this role. The rest of the company runs on Google Workspace, so you will use both.
• Drafting skills for corporate governance documents such as resolutions, consents, certificates and minutes.
• Comfort with the local mechanics of an international portfolio, such as nominee and minority shareholder arrangements, local director requirements and statutory filings that vary by jurisdiction.
• Organization and attention to detail, and the capacity to hold a high volume of deadlines at once.
• Judgment about what you handle, what you flag and what you escalate, and the confidence to escalate early.
• Experience managing or mentoring a junior colleague.
• Willingness to learn the securities reporting side of the role and to hold those deadlines once trained.
• Willingness to be cross-trained more broadly across Legal Operations.
• Strong written and verbal communication, and the ability to work with outside counsel, registered agents and service providers in many countries and time zones.
• A bachelor's degree, an associate degree or a paralegal certificate from an ABA-approved program. If you have none of these, we will consider equivalent relevant experience.

Nice to have

• Exposure to Section 16, Forms 144, Rule 10b5-1 administration or public company reporting.
• Implementing or migrating an entity management system, or materially improving the data quality of an existing one.
• Rationalizing a legacy entity portfolio by consolidating or winding down dormant companies, including entities acquired through M&A.
• Evaluating, piloting or rolling out legal technology or AI tools.
• Supporting restricted party or sanctions screening.
• Work at a multinational technology or SaaS company, or supporting one from a firm or service provider.
• A notary public commission in New York, or willingness to obtain one.
• Certification from NALA, the National Association of Legal Assistants (Certified Paralegal or Advanced Certified Paralegal), or from NFPA, the National Federation of Paralegal Associations (CORE Registered Paralegal or PACE Registered Paralegal).

If you are strong on the entity management core and lighter on some of the rest of the two lists above, we would still like to hear from you. We are hiring for depth in the part of this role that is hardest to teach.