Embark on a transformative journey with Cognite, a global SaaS forerunner in leveraging AI and data to unravel complex business challenges through our cutting-edge offerings including Cognite Atlas AI, an industrial agent workbench, and the Cognite Data Fusion (CDF) platform. We were awarded the 2022 Technology Innovation Leader for Global Digital Industrial Platforms & Cognite was recognized as 2024 Microsoft Energy and Resources Partner of the Year. In the realm of industrial digital transformation, we stand at the forefront, reshaping the future of Oil & Gas, Chemicals, Pharma and other Manufacturing and Energy sectors. Join us in this venture where AI and data meet ingenuity, and together, we forge the path to a smarter, more connected industrial future.
Impact: Cogniters strive to make an impact in all that they do. We are result-oriented, always asking ourselves.
Ownership: Cogniters embrace a culture of ownership. We go beyond our comfort zones to contribute to the greater good, fostering inclusivity and sharing responsibilities for challenges and success.
Relentless: Cogniters are relentless in their pursuit of innovation. We are determined and deliverable (never ruthless or reckless), facing challenges head-on and viewing setbacks as opportunities for growth.
About Cognite & This Role
Cognite is revolutionizing industrial data management through our flagship product, Cognite Data Fusion - a state-of-the-art SaaS platform that transforms how industrial companies leverage their data. We're seeking an exceptional
Staff Data Platform Engineer who will drive technical strategy, architectural excellence, and cross-organizational impact.
As a Principal Software Engineer, you'll be a technical leader who shapes platform direction, mentors engineering teams, and tackles the most complex data engineering challenges in industrial technology. This role combines deep technical expertise with strategic thinking and leadership influence.
About Cognite & This RoleCognite is revolutionizing industrial data management through our flagship product, Cognite Data Fusion - a state-of-the-art SaaS platform that transforms how industrial companies leverage their data. We're seeking an exceptionalStaff Data Platform Engineer who will drive technical strategy, architectural excellence, and cross-organizational impact.As a Principal Software Engineer, you'll be a technical leader who shapes platform direction, mentors engineering teams, and tackles the most complex data engineering challenges in industrial technology. This role combines deep technical expertise with strategic thinking and leadership influence.
Strategic Impact & Leadership
Technical Strategy & Architecture
Define platform architecture for next-generation industrial data processing capabilities serving 100M+ daily requests
Drive technology roadmap decisions that impact multiple engineering teams and product areas
Lead architectural reviews and establish technical standards across the data platform organization
Champion innovation initiatives that differentiate Cognite's technical capabilities in the industrial data market
Platform Engineering Excellence
Architect foundational systems that serve as building blocks for multiple product teams and use cases
Design advanced abstractions and frameworks that accelerate development velocity across the organization
Own end-to-end platform reliability including SLAs, disaster recovery, and operational excellence
Drive platform observability strategy with comprehensive metrics, alerting, and distributed tracing
Advanced Technical Leadership
Lead Apache Spark ecosystem contributions - modify core components, contribute to open-source projects, influence roadmaps
Architect multi-petabyte streaming systems using Flink, Kafka, and custom processing engines for industrial IoT data
Design custom query engines and DSLs optimized for time-series analytics and operational data patterns
Pioneer advanced optimization techniques for columnar storage, query planning, and distributed execution
Organizational Impact
Mentor Staff and Senior engineers across multiple teams, developing technical leadership capabilities
Drive cross-functional initiatives involving ML platform, product engineering, and infrastructure teams
Establish engineering culture around technical excellence, innovation, and customer obsession
Represent Cognite externally through conference speaking, open- source leadership, and technical thought leadership
Exceptional Candidate Profile
Technical Leadership Mastery (8+ years)
Distributed Systems Architecture - Advanced Apache Spark expertise - contributed to Spark core, Catalyst optimizer, or execution engine with merged commits - Large-scale streaming architecture - designed and operated Flink/Kafka systems processing 1M+ events/second with complex statemanagement - Custom execution engine development - built domain-specific query engines or processing frameworks from scratch - Performance engineering excellence - consistently delivered 10x+ performance improvements through algorithmic and architectural innovations
Platform Engineering Leadership - Multi-tenant platform design - architected platforms serving 50+ engineering teams with sophisticated resource isolation and management - Advanced data lake architecture -designed exabyte-scale storage systems with intelligent tiering, compaction, and query optimization - Service mesh and infrastructure - implemented sophisticated microservices architectures with advanced networking, security, and observability
Data Engineering Innovation - OLAP system expertise - deep experience with ClickHouse, Pinot, Druid internals including cluster management and query optimization - Advanced stream processing - implemented complex event processing, windowing, and stateful computations for industrial use cases - Data modeling excellence - designed sophisticated schemas for dimensional modeling, event sourcing, and real-time analytics
Technical Leadership Excellence
Strategic Technical Decision Making - Technology evaluation leadership - led organization-wide technology adoption decisions with comprehensive POCs and risk analysis - Architecture governance - established and maintained architectural principles, standards, and review processes - Technical debt management - strategically balanced feature velocity, system reliability, and long-term maintainability
Open Source & Community Leadership -
Open-source contributions to major Apache projects in the data space (e.g. Apache Spark or Kafka) is a big plus - Significant open source contributions - maintainer or core contributor to major Apache projects (Spark, Flink, Kafka, Airflow) - Technical thought leadership - regular speaker at major conferences (Strata, Spark Summit, QCon) with recognized expertise - Community building -organized engineering communities, contributed to standards bodies, or led technical advisory roles Cross-Functional Collaboration - Product partnership excellence - translated ambiguous business requirements into robust technical architectures - Engineering leadership - mentored and developed multiple Senior and Staff engineers with measurable career progression - Executive communication - effectively communicated complex technical concepts to C-level stakeholders and board members
Startup Excellence & Scale
High-Impact Delivery - Rapid scaling experience - led technical initiatives during hypergrowth phases (10x team/infrastructure scaling) - Customer- facing technical leadership - directly engaged with enterprise customers on complex technical integrations - Business impact ownership - drove technical initiatives that resulted in measurable business outcomes (cost reduction, revenue enablement)
Innovation & Ambiguity Navigation - Greenfield platform development architected major platform components from concept to production at scale - Technical risk management - successfully navigated high-risk technical decisions with incomplete information - Competitive differentiation -developed technical capabilities that created sustainable competitive advantages
If you're excited about the opportunity to work at Cognite and make a difference in the tech industry, we encourage you to apply today! We welcome candidates of all backgrounds and identities to join our team.
We encourage you to follow us on Cognite LinkedIn; we post all our openings there.
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