Job Summary:
Cognition is an applied AI lab building end-to-end software agents, including Devin, the first AI software engineer, and Windsurf, an AI-native IDE. The Software Engineer will tackle complex problems in applied AI, focusing on building systems that enhance the functionality of these products and improve developer experiences.
Responsibilities:
• Build core agent infrastructure: Design and ship the systems that power Devin's long-horizon task execution: tool use, context management, multi-step planning, subagent orchestration, and sandboxed code execution environments.
• Improve Windsurf as an AI-native IDE: Contribute to editor intelligence, agent-in-the-loop workflows, real-time code understanding, and the developer experience that makes Windsurf different from every other IDE.
• Close the loop between models and products: Work directly with researchers to translate new model capabilities into shipped features; your feedback shapes what gets prioritized in training.
• Own reliability and performance at scale: Build systems that handle millions of agentic tasks with low latency, high reliability, and the kind of correctness that developers depend on in production.
• Move the category forward: Cognition is defining what AI software engineering looks like. You will have real input into what gets built next and why.
Qualifications:
Required:
• Experience building reliable, performant distributed systems; you have strong opinions about correctness, failure modes, and production behavior.
• You care about how the software you build feels to use and you have shipped things that real people depend on.
• You can make progress on hard problems with incomplete specs, learn fast from results, and course-correct without needing a lot of direction.
• A track record of shipping quickly while maintaining the kind of code quality that a high-density team expects.
• You have dug into how LLMs work, how agents fail, and what it takes to make AI-powered systems behave reliably in the real world.
• Strong Python proficiency: Python is the primary language across Cognition's codebase; you write clean, well-structured Python and are comfortable owning large Python codebases in production.
• Prior experience at a frontier AI lab, applied AI company, or developer tools company; you know what good looks like in this category.
• Degree from a top-tier university: BS, MS, or equivalent in Computer Science, Mathematics, Engineering, or a related technical discipline from a highly selective program.
Company:
Cognition develops artificial intelligence systems for software engineering and code automation. Founded in 2023, the company is headquartered in San Francisco, USA, with a team of 51-200 employees. The company is currently Growth Stage.