: 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.
Strategic Impact & Leadership Technical Strategy & ArchitectureDefine platform architecture for next-generation industrial data processing capabilities serving 100M+ daily requestsDrive technology roadmap decisions that impact multiple engineering teams and product areasLead architectural reviews and establish technical standards across the data platform organizationChampion innovation initiatives that differentiate Cognite's technical capabilities in the industrial data marketPlatform Engineering Excellence
Architect foundational systems that serve as building blocks for multiple product teams and use casesDesign advanced abstractions and frameworks that accelerate development velocity across the organizationOwn end-to-end platform reliability including SLAs, disaster recovery, and operational excellenceDrive platform observability strategy with comprehensive metrics, alerting, and distributed tracingAdvanced Technical Leadership
Lead Apache Spark ecosystem contributions - modify core components, contribute to open-source projects, influence roadmapsArchitect multi-petabyte streaming systems using Flink, Kafka, and custom processing engines for industrial IoT dataDesign custom query engines and DSLs optimized for time-series analytics and operational data patternsPioneer advanced optimization techniques for columnar storage, query planning, and distributed executionOrganizational Impact
Mentor Staff and Senior engineers across multiple teams, developing technical leadership capabilitiesDrive cross-functional initiatives involving ML platform, product engineering, and infrastructure teamsEstablish engineering culture around technical excellence, innovation, and customer obsessionRepresent 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 innovationsPlatform 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 observabilityData 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 analyticsTechnical 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 maintainabilityOpen 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 membersStartup 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 Technical Environment & Challenges Advanced Technical StackCore Languages: Kotlin, Scala, Java (advanced JVM optimization)Big Data Ecosystem: Apache Spark (internals), Apache Flink, Apache Kafka, Apache AirflowAdvanced Storage: ClickHouse, PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, S3-compatible systems with custom optimizationInfrastructure: Kubernetes (operator development), Terraform,Advanced observability stackCutting-Edge Technologies You'll Drive
Table Format Innovation: Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake internals andoptimizationQuery Engine Development: Trino/Presto, Apache Pinot, custom engine developmentAdvanced Streaming: Complex event processing, exactly-once semantics, advanced windowingML/AI Integration: Feature stores, model serving infrastructure, MLOps platform integrationUnique Technical Challenges
Industrial IoT at Scale: Processing sensor data from millions of industrial assets in real-timeComplex Time-Series Analytics: Advanced temporal queries, anomaly detection, predictive analyticsMulti-Cloud Optimization: Cost and performance optimization across AWS, Azure, GCPEnterprise Integration: Secure, scalable integration with legacy industrial systems Additional Information Join the global Cognite community! 🌐
- Join an organization of 70 different nationalities 🌐 with Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) in focus 🤝
- Office location Rathi Legacy (Rohan Tech Park ) Hoodi (Bengaluru)
- A highly modern and fun working environment with sublime culture across the organization, follow us on Instagram @
cognitedata📷 to know more- Flat structure with direct access to decision-makers, with minimal amount of bureaucracy
- Opportunity to work with and learn from some of the best people on some of the most ambitious projects found anywhere, across industries
- Join our
HUB 🗣️ to be part of the conversation directly with Cogniters and our partners.- Hybrid work environment globally
Why choose Cognite?
🏆 🚀Join us in making a real and lasting impact in one of the most exciting and fastest-growing new software companies in the world. We have repeatedly demonstrated that digital transformation, when anchored on strong DataOps, drives
business value and sustainabilityfor clients and allows front-line workers, as well as domain experts, to make better decisions every single day. We were recognized as one of CNBC's top global enterprise technology startups powering digital transformation! And just recently, Frost & Sullivan named Cognite a Technology Innovation Leader! 🥇 Most recently Cognite Data Fusion® Achieved Industry First DNV Compliance for Digital Twins 🥇Apply today!
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.
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Cognite LinkedIn; we post all our openings there.