Principal Database Engineer

About Cognite

Embark on a transformative journey with Cognite, a global SaaS forerunner in leveraging data to unravel complex business challenges through our cutting-edge 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 digitalization, we stand at the forefront, reshaping the future of Oil & Gas, Manufacturing and Energy sectors. Join us in this venture where data meets ingenuity, and together, we forge the path to a smarter, more connected industrial future.

Learn more about Cognite here

Cognite Product Tour 2024

Cognite Product Tour 2023

Data Contextualization Masterclass 2023

Our values

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. 

The Talent Acquisition Team and Hiring Team will be on summer holiday during the month of July. Please expect delays in processing your application until the beginning of August. Thank you for your understanding and patience.

About Cognite and Cogniters

Cognite is a global leader in industrial software with our Industrial DataOps platform, Cognite Data Fusion®, at the core. We were awarded the 2022 Technology Innovation Leader for Global Digital Industrial Platforms. 

The Product team is the team responsible for developing Cognite Data Fusion as a robust and scalable platform for solving industrial data problems at Cognite. Cognite’s Cognite Data Fusion makes the operational data available at scale and adds value to the data through data processing. This enables asset-intensive industries to make data-driven decisions. Our platform is built on various technologies, each good at solving various challenges.

To build the best possible product, we believe in autonomous teams with developers, product managers and technical program managers working closely together. You will work with a team of highly skilled engineers and a critical Cognite service for time-series data. Time Series data is central to the industrial data ecosystem and the Cognite Data Fusion platform. At Cognite, we have developed a unique Time Series database that scales to tens of trillions of data points and supports consistent, low-latency analytical queries. We use the latest technologies and work closely with end users to iterate quickly towards better product experiences.

Our approach disrupts norms. This Principal Database Engineer role takes root in our Engineering team, embracing collaborative engagements across Security, Infrastructure, and Engineering while maintaining its core within Engineering. We are committed to building up these skill sets by supporting people with interest in growing their knowledge who have experience or passion in SRE, DevOps, database administration, large-scale system administration, distributed systems or other similar roles at the intersection of operations, human factors and software engineering. If you're drawn to operations, human factors, and the crossroads of engineering, this is your invitation.

Our work environment is exciting, dynamic and intense. You will work with the best domain and industry experts: designers, product managers, backend developers, ML engineers, 3D developers and business leaders. We support one another, ask good questions, and give each other constructive feedback. Our goal is to leverage our diverse set of strengths and backgrounds to build innovative products, to think outside the ordinary, and grind through and nurture a great culture. Fueling our vision is the Product team, driving the evolution of Cognite Data Fusion into a robust platform that redefines industrial data challenges. We're at the forefront of transforming asset-intensive sectors for safety, sustainability, and profitability. Cognite Data Fusion transforms operational data, enabling industries to harness the power of data-driven decisions.

Our Stack and Your Canvas

We work with open-source technologies that need to run in multiple cloud environments – both public clouds (Google Cloud Platform, Azure, and AWS) and private clouds with customer-provided Kubernetes.

Managed Kubernetes (GKE, AKS, EKS, Openshift) forms the base on which we build our products. We build on a self-run Foundation DB based scale-out data store for managing time-series data and use PostgreSQL and Elasticsearch. We replicate data to different storage systems to be able to answer different types of queries. 

Our backend developer teams work with Kotlin, Java, and Python. CI/CD is handled by combining Github, Jenkins, and Spinnaker to test and deploy code to production. The infrastructure is managed as code with Terraform and Atlantis, and services are monitored using Prometheus, Grafana, and Lightstep.

About The Opportunity

As a Principal Database Engineer, you will help with the continuous well-being of our portfolio of Postgres deployments – in both public and private clouds, through managed services and on self-managed Kubernetes clusters.

Even when using mature as-a-Service offerings and Kubernetes operators, there are many things that can and will go wrong. Herding clusters that need upgrading, upscaling, cost-trimming, and recovery etc., while continuously serving heavy workloads with tight SLOs requires solid reliability engineering, and working with service teams to inform requirements and educational needs.

A typical day as a Cogniter will contain the following tasks & responsibilities

• Help plan, deploy, upgrade, monitor, and troubleshoot our Postgres clusters
• Work with service and application teams on designing, performance testing, tuning, and optimizing Postgres usage
• Enable product teams to focus on using the databases well, and not on servicing them, through upskilling relevant database knowledge across the teams

We believe most of these should match you and your experience

• 5+ years of experience with databases, 2+ years with Postgres
• You can read query plans and explain how and why the query ends up executing that way to colleagues
• You have extensive production experience, and some relevant war stories to share
• A master degree in Computer Science or a similar amount of experience
• Experience with large Cloud deployments on either AWS, GCP, or Azure
• Comfortable with Python or similar programming languages to make automations. You don't need strong programming skills, but should be able to make or change simple scripts, integrations and automations.
• You enjoy sharing knowledge, and can calibrate who needs to know what




Don’t meet every single requirement? We are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive and authentic workplace, so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.

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 sustainability for clients and allows front-line workers, as well as domain experts, to make better decisions every single day. 
• Cognite Earns 2023 Microsoft Partner of the Year Award; Recognized as a Global Leader in Energy & Resources and Industrials & Manufacturing
• And just recently, Frost & Sullivan named Cognite a Technology Innovation Leader!
• Built In 2024 Best Places to Work in Austin, TX and Houston, TX
• Cognite Recognized as 2024 Microsoft Energy and Resources Partner of the Year

A snapshot of our many perks and benefits as a Cogniter

• Competitive Compensation including base plus bonus
• 401(k) with 4% employer matching
• Health, Dental, Vision & Disability Coverages with premiums fully covered for employees and all dependents
• Unlimited PTO + flexibility to enjoy it
• 18 Company Holidays including the week between Christmas & New Years
• Paid Parental Leave Program
• Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP)
• Employee Referral Program
• Company Paid Friday Lunch via DoorDash + Fully Stocked Fridges in the offices
• Join a team of 70 different nationalities 🌐 with Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) in focus 🤝.
• A highly modern and fun working environment with sublime culture across the organization, follow us on Instagram @cognitedata 📷 to know more
• 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.
• Paid mobile phone and WiFI
• A pet lover? Get the chance to meet Spot 🐶!

A snapshot of our many perks and benefits as a Cogniter

* Competitive Compensation including base plus bonus

* 401(k) with 4% employer matching

* Health, Dental, Vision & Disability Coverages with premiums fully covered for employees and all dependents

* Unlimited PTO + flexibility to enjoy it

* 18 Company Holidays including the week between Christmas & New Years

* Paid Parental Leave Program

* Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP)

* Employee Referral Program

* Company Paid Friday Lunch via DoorDash + Fully Stocked Fridges in the offices

* Join a team of 70 different nationalities 🌐 with Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) in focus 🤝.

* A highly modern and fun working environment with sublime culture across the organization, follow us on Instagram @cognitedata 📷 to know more

* 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.

* Paid mobile phone and WiFI

*A pet lover? Get the chance to meet Spot 🐶!

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 sustainability for clients and allows front-line workers, as well as domain experts, to make better decisions every single day. 

* Cognite Earns 2023 Microsoft Partner of the Year Award; Recognized as a Global Leader in Energy & Resources and Industrials & Manufacturing

* Frost & Sullivan named Cognite a Technology Innovation Leader!

* Built In 2024 Best Places to Work in Austin, TX and Houston, TX

* Cognite Recognized as 2024 Microsoft Energy and Resources Partner of the Year

* 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.

We encourage you to follow us on Cognite LinkedIn; we post all our openings there.