Sumit Pandey

Design Leader — Industrial AI & Data Platforms

Oslo, Norway  |  sumitpandey.com  |  linkedin.com/in/sumitpandeyg

Summary

Design leader with 15 years working at the intersection of enterprise software, industrial data, and AI-assisted product design. Currently leads the design studio function at Cognite and sets direction across the entire product portfolio, spanning CDF Studio (data engineering tooling) and Cognite Flows (AI-native industrial applications), working directly with product leadership on the company's full product line. PhD in interaction and strategic design, University of Oslo. Background spans research, 0→1 product design, and design organization leadership.

Experience

Cognite — Oslo, Norway · Jul 2021 – Present

Principal Design Lead · Jul 2025 – Present

Led the Industrial Experiences area (Cognite's applications for maintenance, reliability, and field operations) and Cognite's design ops and design systems function through the end of 2025, including a six-designer team and a stint as interim Head of Design during a leadership transition. Stood up a leaner, two-person cross-geography Design Studio in January 2026 to set direction across the full product line, working directly with product leadership.

• Shaped the vision and story for what became the biggest launch in Cognite's history, with roughly 500 applications built and 2,000 users within six months, presented and stress-tested at IMPACT, Cognite's Houston user conference.
• The Design Studio's first project grew directly out of Flows; it has since led conceptualization and visioning for the CDF Studio initiative, targeting a 50% reduction in setup and onboarding effort ahead of a 2027 flagship launch, and for Cognite's integrated supply chain launch.
• Running Voice of Customer research and forward-deployed, embedded field engagements in the context of Flows, contributing to yearly portfolio reviews and strategy refreshes across PM-designer pairs in Phoenix, Oslo, and Bangalore.

Principal Designer · Jul 2023 – Jun 2025

Took over design leadership of the APM portfolio following field work that helped define Cognite's reliability offering and shape its asset health offering, growing the design team to six designers, three of them senior ICs.

• Consolidated four standalone, customer-specific applications into three unified offerings — maintenance, reliability, and operations — and defined the portfolio-wide core user journeys that became the basis for Cognite's land-and-expand motion and its roadmap for field operations, maintenance, and reliability.
• Led field engagements with Cognite's top ten customers across Japan, the Middle East, and the US, focused on problem areas like root cause analysis and turnaround planning; usage grew from a few hundred users on a single customer to 3,000–5,000 monthly active users per product surface.
• Work was anchored at the SLT level: the COO sponsored the APM effort, and the CPO's office separately sponsored the land-and-expand motion, framed around bridging the gap between field and office.

Senior Designer · Aug 2021 – Jun 2023

• Led the redesign of Cognite Maintain, growing it from a single customer deployment to five, contributing close to $5M in ARR.
• Led the move from a solution-by-solution go-to-market approach to six core GTM motions under the APM umbrella, a cross-functional effort spanning GTM, value delivery, product, design, and engineering; anchored at the SLT level, it became the company's core product motion for the following years, ahead of a reorganization of the product org.

Halogen — Oslo, Norway · Lead Designer · Nov 2019 – Jul 2021

Worked across energy, data, hospitality, and design systems, partnering with clients to translate strategic opportunities into shipped digital tools and services across five sectors.

• Kongsberg Digital: led information and navigation architecture for the first workflows built on the Kognitwin platform, as part of a four-person design team whose work helped secure KDI's first global contract, with Shell.
• Equinor: supported early-stage research and facilitation for the Yggdrasil initiative, helping shape the digital framework for autonomous field development.
• Norstat: led 0→1 product design for Norstat Express and redesigned modules in Norstat Live.
• NoHo Norway: conducted fieldwork across restaurants and event venues in Oslo to identify digital transformation opportunities.
• PGS (now TGS) and SFS: facilitated strategy and concept sprints with SMEs on digitalization opportunities.

University of Oslo Library — Oslo, Norway · Design Lead, LibraryUX Initiative · Jan 2015 – Jun 2018 (contract)

• Introduced and embedded design practice across Nordic academic libraries as a strategic competence, not just a service layer.
• Facilitated 11 two-day design workshops across the University of Oslo, NTNU Trondheim, Gothenburg University, and the National Library of Finland, reaching 300+ attendees.
• Built and led a core LibraryUX team of six library staff and leadership members.
• Developed Frilux, a brand and set of touchpoints for the library's long-term design vision, with a branding partner.

Creative Europe — Oslo, Norway · Interaction Design Researcher / Project Coordinator · Jan 2015 – Jun 2017 (contract)

• Independently designed and exhibited three projects exploring the cultural impact of smart technology, machine learning, and voice interfaces, shown at the City Gallery, Gdansk.
• Mentored 10 student projects, four of which received course design awards, and coordinated workshops with 70+ international participants.
• Managed EU project reporting, budgeting, and milestone delivery for the YoungExpressions project.

Globant — Pune, India · Sep 2011 – Dec 2014

Senior UX Design Consultant · Apr – Dec 2014

• Led design for two stealth-mode cloud infrastructure startups.
• Redesigned Seclore's multi-channel onboarding experience, reducing customer drop-off by an estimated 50%.

UX Design Consultant · Sep 2011 – Apr 2014

• Delivered design for 10+ mobile, web, and desktop applications.
• Published case studies and led workshops at Asia-Pacific CHI 2013 (Bangalore) and HCI International 2014 (Greece).

Skills & Practice

Service design & interaction design built for ambiguity

• Taking nebulous industrial and enterprise contexts and giving them enough structure that a team can act on them with confidence.
• Direct field research and journey mapping, spanning geographies including Japan, the US, and the Middle East — embedded directly in product and sales conversations rather than conducted at a remove.
• Design systems strategy.

AI-assisted design workflow

• Figma, Claude Code, and Cursor for prototyping, synthesis, and front-end collaboration.

Education

PhD, Interaction and Strategic Design · University of Oslo, 2015–2019

• Thesis: Designing Smart Things (2019), on making nebulous organizational and technical contexts legible enough to act on, the same instinct behind the Cognite work above.
• 13 peer-reviewed publications, 2011–2019.

Post Graduate Diploma in Design, New Media Design · National Institute of Design, Gandhinagar, India, 2009–2011

Bachelor of Technology, Information and Communication Technology · DA-IICT, Gandhinagar, India, 2005–2009

Awards

Cognite Innovator's Award, 2025 · Best Paper, IHCI 2013 · Finalist, IxDA Awards 2012 · World Top Ten, IEEE President's Challenge, 2009