Principal Engineer (Architect)
Cognite
IT
Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
Posted on Oct 9, 2025
About Cognite
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.
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 will drive impact
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
Platform Engineering Excellence
Advanced Technical Leadership
Organizational Impact
What you will bring
- 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
Join the Global Cognite Community
Be part of a diverse, global team of 70+ nationalities, building technology that transforms how the world’s industries operate.
Work from our modern Bengaluru hub in a hybrid, high-trust environment with a flat structure and direct access to decision-makers.
At Cognite, you’ll learn fast, make an impact, and grow your career alongside exceptional talent.
Why Cognite
Recognized by CNBC and Frost & Sullivan as a global innovation leader, Cognite is driving the next wave of industrial AI and digital transformation.
Join us to shape the future of data and industry.
Apply today — and follow us on LinkedIn (@Cognite) to discover more opportunities.