Senior Talent Acquisition Partner

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, 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.

Overview

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, 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.

Role Summary

The Senior Talent Acquisition Partner will act as a strategic consultant to business leaders and People Business Partners, moving beyond mere vacancy filling to architecting high-performance teams. You’ll partner with leaders to define, challenge, and refine our talent needs to ensure we hire for long-term organizational success and sustainable growth.

Responsibilities

• Lead mission-critical workforce demand conversations across Engineering, Product, and Commercial functions, thinking impact beyond merely filling jobs.
• Collaborate with Hiring Managers and People Business Partners to define competencies and skills required for the future state of roles, recognizing that scaling companies require anticipatory hiring.
• Challenge hiring requirements on market feasibility, role design, and alignment with Cognite's multi-year product and business roadmap.
• Conduct regular market intelligence sessions with leadership teams, translating external talent trends into informed discussions about role leveling, compensation positioning, and skill development investments.
• Ensure headcount decisions align with our scaling strategy and contribute to building the organizational capability we'll need in 24–36 months.
• Maintain rigorous data hygiene in the ATS, treating it as a system of truth for recruitment analytics, velocity metrics, quality measures, and funnel health.
• Partner with HR Operations and People systems to continuously optimize the candidate experience, from application through onboarding.

Interview Framework Design & Coaching

• Design comprehensive, role-specific interview guides that assess both current competencies and future-state potential.
• Coach Hiring Managers and interview panels on conducting high-quality behavioral interviews, eliminating bias, and consistently evaluating candidates against the Cognite Bar.
• Mentor hiring panel members on interview techniques, candidate assessment, and the strategic importance of their role in our talent acquisition process.
• Build internal capability through interview shadowing, feedback loops, and continuous coaching to ensure every interviewer represents Cognite's commitment to excellence.
• Lead calibration sessions with hiring teams to ensure consistent, equitable, and rigorous evaluation of all candidates.

Process Advocacy, Bar-Raising & Culture Gatekeeping

• Act as the gatekeeper of excellence, challenging hiring decisions that do not meet the Cognite Bar, even under urgency or pressure.
• Serve as a trusted advisor to business leaders on difficult hiring trade-offs, including when to invest in development versus continuing the search for a higher-bar candidate.

Creative Sourcing & Community Building

• Design assessment strategies for highly ambiguous, hard-to-fill roles, including work samples, case studies, and creative evaluation methods.
• Design multi-channel sourcing strategies for hard-to-fill roles, including approaches to identifying passive candidates and non-obvious talent sources.
• Build active communities and networks of candidates who are engaged with Cognite's mission, products, and culture, creating a sustainable pipeline of referral-ready talent.
• Implement proactive outreach campaigns that keep Cognite top-of-mind with high-potential passive candidates, creating opt-in relationships that generate referrals and warm candidate flow between hiring needs.
• Leverage AI and market mapping tools to identify non-obvious candidate segments, competitive talent at peer organizations, and emerging talent communities aligned with scaling needs.

The Impact You Bring to Cognite

• Culture of Shared Responsibility: foster a culture where hiring is a team sport, aligning Hiring Managers, People Business Partners, Total Rewards, and Department Heads on budget, role design, and talent strategy.
• Strategic Future-State Thinking: partner with leadership to define competencies, skills, and talent profiles required as Cognite scales, ensuring we attract and hire people who can grow into tomorrow's leadership and technical roles.
• Bar-Raising & Gatekeeping Excellence: maintain executive presence to push back on hiring decisions that don’t meet Cognite standards, sustaining excellence during growth or urgency.
• Strategic Influence Without Formal Authority: influence department-wide goals with real-time market intelligence, competitive talent data, and hiring insights that shape role scoping, leveling, and market positioning.
• Creative Problem-Solving in Complex Markets: navigate the global AI talent market to design non-obvious ways to attract elite passive talent in competitive landscapes.
• Community & Network Builder: establish Cognite as an employer candidates actively want to join, creating a sustainable talent advantage through community engagement and long-term candidate relationships.
• Data Integrity & Automation Mindset: treat the ATS as a system of truth and automate manual tasks to maximize time spent on high-value interactions, sourcing, and partnership.
• Interview Excellence & Capability Building: elevate hiring quality through thoughtful interview design and coach-based development of hiring managers, applying the Cognite Bar across roles.

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of full-cycle recruitment experience in high-growth SaaS, Deep Tech, AI-focused, or technology-driven environments, with a track record of hiring for technical, commercial, and/or leadership positions.
• Executive search, RPO, or retained search background — experience in high-stakes environments with non-obvious talent and complex stakeholder management.
• Proven consultative track record as a business partner influencing hiring strategy and shaping talent acquisition practices.
• Demonstrated success designing interview frameworks, coaching on assessment techniques, and building hiring capability across organizations.

Preferred Experience

• Expert-level command of modern ATS platforms (e.g., Greenhouse, Lever, Workable) with disciplined data hygiene, funnel analytics, and recruitment metrics.
• Experience building candidate communities, networks, and referral programs that generate sustained passive candidate flow and active engagement.
• Track record of moving beyond transactional recruiting to strategic talent partnership, including solving bottlenecks and elevating hiring quality.

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.