Industrial software company Cognite expands, adds employees in Austin

“All of these areas [we serve] have been growing rapidly, so interest in our products and services has exploded,” Ronningen said. “By nature, oil and gas is a useful thing, but we see a lot more demand for oil and gas and power and utilities, even wind and solar, in Austin because of the great community of talent here.”

Opportunity Austin, an economic development initiative through the Austin Chamber of Commerce, is assisting Cognite with its growth. Opportunity Austin helped find skilled individuals for Cognite’s summer internship program that had four interns out of a pool of 2,000 applications. Ronningen said the initiative is further helping with hiring employees.

Austin is an ideal city to expand in not only because of the demand and supply of workers, but because the diversity in Austin matches the global diversity of their company, Ronningen said.

“Cognite has always focused on diversity, and with the 500 employees we have today, we’re coming from 60 different countries,” Ronningen said. “I think Austin is an area where diversity is flowering. We want to add on to the same culture Cognite is all about.”