Principal Backend Engineer

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.

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. 

As the first line of defense for securing privileged customer data, our work is crucial to customer and company success. We operate where security, infrastructure, and product meet: designing authorization, identity, and audit solutions that are fast, correct, and observable.

At Cognite, you'll join a high-trust, product-minded engineering culture in Oslo, with the autonomy to ship, and the support to do your best work.

As a Principal Engineer, you will take ownership of security-critical backend systems, directly impacting how our platform is secured and used.

• Architecting and building our core authentication and authorization services, applying modern security principles to protect all customer data.
• Designing and scaling resilient gRPC/HTTP APIs and microservices on Kubernetes, ensuring high availability, low latency, and ease of integration for other internal teams.
• Driving backend innovation by writing clean, maintainable code and refining our service architecture to support rapid product growth.
• Leading development initiatives including threat modeling, performance tuning, and reliability engineering to harden our systems against evolving security challenges.
• Mentoring engineers and collaborating across teams to shape our technical roadmap and foster a culture of secure-by-default engineering.

• Significant experience building and operating distributed backend systems in a modern, typed language.
• Strong proficiency in Rust or Kotlin. We value deep expertise in either language and a pragmatic approach to choosing the right tool for the job.
• Deep expertise in modern authentication and authorization concepts (e.g., OIDC, OAuth2, RBAC/ABAC) and their practical application in building secure services.
• A proven track record of owning services in production, from initial design and development to deployment, monitoring, and incident response.
• Hands-on experience with cloud-native technologies, particularly Kubernetes and cloud platforms like GCP, AWS or Azure.
• A collaborative and pragmatic mindset, with good communication skills and a desire to mentor others.

Don't meet every single requirement? We're building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace. If this role excites you, we encourage you to apply,  you may be the right person for this or another role.

A snapshot of our many perks and benefits as a Cogniter

* Join an organization of 60 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

* Flat structure with direct access to decision-makers

* Opportunity to work with and learn from some of the best people on some of the most ambitious projects found anywhere, across industries, with cutting edge technology

* Join our HUB  to be part of the conversation directly with Cogniters and our partners.

* Get access to private health services with Cognite Care.

* Hungry? We've got your back. A subsidized lunch at the canteen is delivered by the chefs at Fornebuporten (Aker Tech House)

* Our own Cognite exclusive coffee bar  with the friendliest baristas is here to brew coffee for coffee lovers, tea for tea lovers, smoothie for smoothie lovers, and the baristas creative concoctions when the mood strikes.

* We take your mental- and physical health seriously by having a broad health offering and a free membership to our fully-staffed gym on-site.

* A pet lover? Get the chance to meet Spot at the Robot Garden

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. Please do not hesitate to contact our Talent Acquisition team with any questions -

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