Senior Talent Acquisition Partner

Cognite; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 3,500,000 - 5,500,000; Full time

Job summary

Cognite is seeking a Senior Talent Acquisition Partner in Bengaluru to act as a strategic consultant to business leaders and People Business Partners. You will architect high-performance teams, define future-ready competencies, and design predictive interview processes to elevate hiring standards.

You will lead multi-channel sourcing, build engaged candidate communities, and partner with HR to optimize the candidate journey from application to onboarding, ensuring a scalable talent pipeline for

Qualifications

• Must have 8+ years of full-cycle recruitment in high-growth tech or SaaS.
• Proven ability to partner with leaders and shape talent strategy.
• Experience designing interview frameworks and coaching interview panels.
• Experience building candidate communities and referral networks.
• Strong data hygiene and use of recruitment metrics to drive decisions.

Responsibilities

• Lead workforce demand conversations across Engineering, Product, and Commercial functions.
• Collaborate with Hiring Managers to define competencies and future-state roles.
• Challenge role design and market feasibility against Cognite's roadmap.
• Conduct market intelligence and translate trends into compensation and skills decisions.
• Design role-specific interview guides and coach panels to uphold the Cognite Bar.
• Build internal capability through shadowing and feedback loops.
• Maintain ATS data integrity and optimize candidate experience.

Skills

Full-cycle recruiting

Consultative partnership

Interview framework design

Behavioral interviewing

Talent partnerships

Sourcing strategy

Candidate community building

Data-driven recruitment

Tools

ATS platforms

Job description

Job Description:

Cognite operates at the forefront of industrial digitalization, building AI, and data solutions that solve the world’s hardest, highest-impact problems. Cognite accelerates the digital transformation to drive operational improvements.

We thrive in challenges. We challenge assumptions. We execute with speed and ownership. If you view obstacles as signals to step forward - not backwards - you’ll feel right at home here.

Our Moonshot is bold: Unlock $100B in customer value by 2035, and redefine how global industry works. Join us in this venture where AI and data meet ingenuity, and together, we will forge the path to a smarter, more connected industrial future.

How you’ll demonstrate Ownership

Reporting to the Director Talent Acquisition Americas, 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 the high-performance team. You dont just execute on requests; you partner with leaders to define, challenge, and refine our talent needs to ensure we hire for long-term organizational success and sustainable growth.

What You’ll Do

Impact of recruiting

• Lead mission-critical workforce demand conversations across Engineering, Product, and Commercial functions, thinking impact more than merely filling jobs.
• Collaborate with Hiring Managers and People Business Partners to define competencies and skills required for the future state of roles, not just todays needs—recognizing that scaling companies require anticipatory hiring
• Challenge hiring requirements on market feasibility, role design, and alignment with Cognites 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 every headcount decision aligns with our scaling strategy and contributes to building the organizational capability well 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 & Behavioral Excellence Coaching

• Design comprehensive, role-specific interview guides that assess both current competencies and future-state potential, moving beyond generic interviews to predictive talent evaluation
• 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 Cognites 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, possessing the executive presence to respectfully challenge hiring decisions that dont meet the Cognite Bar, even when there is urgency or pressure
• Serve as a trusted advisor to business leaders on difficult hiring trade-offs, including when to invest in development vs. when to continue the search for a higher-bar candidate

Creative Sourcing & Community Building

• Design assessment strategies for highly ambiguous, hard-to-fill roles where no clear talent pool exists, including work samples, case studies, and creative evaluation methods
• Design multi-channel sourcing strategies for hard-to-fill roles where traditional talent pools are insufficient, including creative approaches to identifying passive candidates and non-obvious talent sources
• Build active communities and networks of candidates—both active and passive—who are engaged with Cognites 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 even in between hiring needs
• Leverage AI and market mapping tools to identify non-obvious candidate segments, competitive talent currently at peer organizations, and emerging talent communities aligned with our scaling needs

The Impact you bring to Cognite

• Culture of Shared Responsibility: You foster a culture where hiring is a team sport, leading cross-functional alignment between Hiring Managers, People Business Partners, Total Rewards, and Department Heads to ensure budget, role design, and talent strategy are perfectly synced
• Strategic Future-State Thinking: You partner with leadership to think beyond todays needs, helping teams define the competencies, skills, and talent profiles required as Cognite scales—ensuring we attract and hire people capable of growing into tomorrows leadership and technical roles
• Bar-Raising & Gatekeeping Excellence: You possess the executive presence and credibility to push back on hiring decisions that dont meet the Cognite Standard, ensuring that our commitment to excellence is sustained even during periods of rapid growth or hiring urgency
• Strategic Influence Without Formal Authority: You influence department-wide goals by providing real-time market intelligence, competitive talent data, and hiring insights that dictate how roles are scoped, leveled, and positioned in the marketplace
• Creative Problem-Solving in Complex Markets: You independently navigate the complexity of the global AI talent market, designing non-obvious ways to attract elite passive talent in a highly competitive landscape where traditional recruiting doesnt work
• Community & Network Builder: You establish Cognite as an employer that candidates actively want to join, creating a sustainable talent advantage through community engagement, referral networks, and genuine candidate relationships that span years
• Data Integrity & Automation Mindset: You treat the ATS as a system of truth and ruthlessly automate manual administrative tasks to maximize time spent on high-value human interaction, strategic sourcing, and talent partnership
• Interview Excellence & Capability Building: You elevate the quality of our hiring through thoughtful interview design, coach-based development of hiring managers, and consistent application of the Cognite Bar across all levels and functions

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of full-cycle recruitment experience in high-growth SaaS, Deep Tech, AI-focused, or technology-driven environments, with a successful track record of hiring for technical, commercial, and/or leadership positions
• Proven consultative track record as a business partner who has successfully influenced hiring strategy, raised hiring bar standards, and shaped talent acquisition practices in previous roles
• Demonstrated success designing interview frameworks, coaching hiring managers on assessment techniques, and building hiring capability across organizations
• Track record of moving beyond transactional recruiting to strategic talent partnership—examples of identifying talent bottlenecks, solving them creatively, and elevating hiring quality
• Experience building candidate communities, networks, and referral programs that generate sustained passive candidate flow and active engagement
• Expert-level command of modern ATS platforms with disciplined approach to data hygiene, funnel analytics, and recruitment metrics
• Demonstrated ability to think strategically about talent in a scaling context—examples of anticipating future skill needs, planning for role evolution, and building teams ahead of immediate hiring needs

Preferred Experience

• Executive search, RPO, or retained search background—experience in high-stakes environments where identifying non-obvious talent and managing complex stakeholder relationships is the norm
• Hands-on experience using GenAI tools for sourcing, market mapping, candidate outreach, or interview preparation to eliminate transactional manual work and enhance strategic decision-making
• Experience working in matrix or global environments with distributed teams and cross-functional stakeholder management

Learn more about us

• Impact 2025
• Cognites Industrial AI: Moonshot
• We’re globally recognized domain experts with an international presence that spans Phoenix, Houston, Oslo Tokyo, Bengaluru, and Abu Dhabi.

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.