Senior Field Engineer (Pre-Sales/Forward Deployed)
Cognite is hiring a Senior Field Engineer (Pre-Sales/Forward Deployed) for a remote role open to applicants in United States. Level rates it ; you can apply on Cognite.
Level's read on this job
- Works on AI ●●●○ is how Level rates this forward deployed engineer role: the daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
- The posting lists this role as remote.
- Tools and skills the posting cites include OpenAI, Claude and Gemini.
- Level classifies it as a senior role.
- Level lists 53 other open roles at Cognite.
AI in this role
Cognite operates at the forefront of industrial digitalization, building AI, and data solutions that solve the world’s hardest, highest-impact problems. With unmatched industrial heritage and a comprehensive suite of AI capabilities, including low-code AI agents, 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
- Client Engagement & Moving Strategy to Reality: Partner with Account Executives to prioritize strategic opportunities and act as the technical lead for complex engagements. You will move clients from high-level strategy to live, functioning versions of Cognite’s solutions through Fast AI Prototyping via Cognite Atlas AI™ and Cognite Data Fusion®.
- Agentic Solution Development: Lead the design and implementation of first-of-their-kind industrial agents. You will leverage the Atlas AI workbench to automate complex industrial workflows, ensuring solutions are technically feasible, scalable, and grounded in the contextualized data foundation of our Industrial Knowledge Graph.
- Technical Representation & Use Case Design: Lead use case workshops and briefings, translating functional and non-functional requirements into deliverable high-level use cases. You will build executive confidence by delivering client-focused demos and reference architectures that prove the ROI of Industrial AI.
- Product Innovation & Field Leadership: Act as the critical bridge between the field and Cognite’s Product organization. Translate "field friction" and deployment learnings into actionable product requirements and scalable best practices that strengthen Cognite’s position as the leader in Industrial DataOps.
- Industrial Architecture Expertise: Ability to design scalable architectures that unify siloed IT/OT/ET data into a single source of truth using Cognite Data Fusion®.
- Agentic AI Proficiency: Demonstrated experience building with LLMs (Gemini, Claude, GPT-4) and a deep understanding of the Agentic AI landscape to create trusted, mission-critical industrial agents via Cognite Atlas AI™.
- Full-Stack Solution Engineering: Ability to orchestrate and build end-to-end prototypes—integrating GenAI components, CDF data models, and legacy customer systems—using scalable software practices and open-source AI frameworks.
- Technical Evangelism & Strategic Influence: The ability to distill complex technical AI solutions into compelling, value-driven narratives. You can pivot seamlessly between deep architectural sessions with engineers and strategy briefings with C-level executives.
- 3+ years in forward deployed engineering/pre-sales engineering roles ideally in enterprise SaaS, cloud platforms, or industrial software companies.
- Strong engineering background. Preferred fields include but are not limited to Computer Science, Mathematics, Software Engineering, Physics, and Machine Learning.
- A strong foundation in Python and a deep understanding of the GenAI landscape (embeddings, RAG, and prompt chaining).
- Excellent problem-solving, analytical, and communication skills.
- Ability and interest to travel up to 50% as needed to be "on the ground" where the impact happens.
Preferred Experience
- Education or experience in the industrial space (e.g., Petroleum, Chemical, Mechanical, or Control System Engineering).
- Previous customer facing or sales experience.
- You’ve worked with "messy" real-world variables from the Industries we work in (Energy, Oil and Gas, Chemicals, Life Sciences, Discrete) and understand, for example, why data quality in a refinery is harder than data quality in a web app.
- You are excited to bridge the gap between traditional heavy industry and the future of Autonomous Operations via Cognite Data Fusion® and Agentic AI.
A snapshot of our many perks and benefits as a Cogniter
- Competitive compensation
- 401(k) with employer matching
- Competitive health, dental, vision & disability coverages for employees and all dependents
- Unlimited PTO
- Paid Parental Leave Program
- Employee Referral Program
- Impact 2025
- Cognite's Industrial AI: Moonshot
- We’re globally recognized domain experts with an international presence that spans Phoenix, Houston, Oslo Tokyo, Bengaluru, and Abu Dhabi.
How we rate this
Senior Field Engineer (Pre-Sales/Forward Deployed) at Cognite rates 67 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Works on AI (AI Level 3 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Works on AI. The daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Also common in forward deployed engineer jobs at this level
Pay
- Typical forward deployed engineer job
- $180k
This posting doesn't list pay. Use the typical forward deployed engineer figure when pay comes up. See forward deployed engineer jobs
Questions you could be asked
- How would you design a retrieval step so the model answers from real data instead of guessing?
- How do you decide when an AI agent can act on its own versus asking for approval first?
- What are the limits of OpenAI that you've run into, and how did you work around them?
- What's a project where you used Claude hands-on?
- Walk me through how you've used Gemini in your day-to-day work.
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: RAG, AI agents, OpenAI, Claude, and Gemini. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
- Show where AI is part of your daily process, not a one-off project. This role expects it to be a running habit.
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