Principal Engineer - Architect

Cognite operates at the forefront of industrial digitalization, building AI and data solutions that solve some of the world’s hardest, highest-impact problems. With unmatched industrial heritage and a comprehensive suite of AI capabilities, including low-code AI agents, Cognite accelerates the digital transformation to drive operational improvements. Our moonshot is bold: unlock $100B in customer value by 2035 and redefine how global industry works. What Cognite is Relentless to achieve We thrive in challenges. We challenge assumptions. We execute with speed and ownership. If you view obstacles as signals to step forward - not step back - you’ll feel at home here. Join us in this venture where AI and data meet ingenuity, and together, we forge the path to a smarter, more connected industrial future.   About the Opportunity We're building the data engineering backbone of the next-generation industrial AI platform in our Bengaluru engineering hub, led by our VP of Engineering. This is a greenfield opportunity to architect and own large-scale distributed systems that process and contextualize industrial data at massive scale, from real-time streaming pipelines ingesting terabytes daily, to high-performance query engines serving thousands of concurrent users globally .If you've ever wanted to work on genuinely hard technical problems where milliseconds matter, data integrity is non-negotiable, and your code directly impacts billion-dollar industrial operations, this is it. How you’ll demonstrate Ownership 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 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 Organisational 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 The Impact you bring to Cognite Technical Leadership & Impact: Architecting at Scale (8+ years): Expert in distributed systems, data-intensive architecture, and performance engineering. Hands-on with Spark internals, Flink/Kafka streaming at million+ events/sec scale, and custom query or execution engine development. Tech Stack Mastery: Kotlin, Scala, Java (advanced JVM tuning) | Apache Spark, Flink, Kafka, Airflow | ClickHouse, PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, S3 systems | Kubernetes, Terraform, full observability stack Innovation You’ll Drive: Next-Gen Data Systems: Iceberg & Delta Lake internals, Trino/Pinot query engines Streaming & Real-Time Analytics: Complex event processing, exactly-once semantics, advanced windowing AI/ML Integration: Feature stores, MLOps, and model-serving infrastructure Core Engineering Challenges: Real-time Industrial IoT data pipelines | Advanced time-series analytics | Multi-cloud cost & performance optimization | Secure enterprise integrations Platform & Data Leadership: Built multi-tenant platforms serving 50+ teams | Designed exabyte-scale data lakes with intelligent tiering and query optimization | Deep OLAP expertise (ClickHouse, Pinot, Druid) and event-driven data modeling Leadership & Influence: Defined architectural vision and standards | Guided technology evaluations and debt management | Mentored senior engineers and communicated complex strategies to executives Open Source & Community Leadership: Contributor or maintainer in major Apache projects (Spark, Flink, Kafka) | Speaker at top tech conferences (Strata, QCon, Spark Summit) | Active in engineering communities and standards groups Startup & Scale DNA: Led teams through 10x growth | Delivered measurable business impact | Built and scaled platforms from concept to production under high ambiguity What we offer Competitive compensation aligned with top talent in the Indian market Opportunity to work on globally impactful products used by Fortune 500 companies Career growth: Clear path to the next levels of technical leadership and impact Modern work environment: Flexible hybrid work, top-tier tools and infrastructure Learning & development: Conference budgets, certifications, and continuous upskilling Work directly with VP of Engineering and leadership team in a high-trust, high-autonomy environment   Equal Opportunity Cognite is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment at work and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive the same level of consideration for employment.