Technical Engagement Manager, Federal

We're the makers of Devin, the first AI software engineer, and Windsurf, the AI-native IDE. Together, they represent our vision for collaborative AI teammates that enable engineers to focus on more interesting problems and empower teams to strive for more ambitious goals.

Our team is small and talent-dense. Among our founding team, we have world-class competitive programmers, former founders, and leaders from companies at the cutting edge of AI including Scale AI, Palantir, Cursor, Waymo, Tesla, Lunchclub, Modal, Google DeepMind, and Nuro.

Building Devin and Windsurf is just the first step—our hardest challenges still lie ahead. If you’re excited to solve some of the world’s biggest problems and build AI that can reason on real-world tasks, apply to join us.

Cognition Technical Engagement Managers on the federal team own adoption, expansion, and execution across a small number of high-value accounts, helping major federal organizations, system integrators, and OEMs deploy and scale Devin and Windsurf.

This is a technical GTM role with direct responsibility for massive account growth. Success means building trusted relationships, identifying high-value use cases, running strong technical and executive conversations, and converting early wins into broader usage, larger contract scope, and successful joint-GTM opportunities where applicable. The work is commercial, but driven through technical discovery, tailored demos, training, account strategy, and disciplined follow-through rather than top-of-funnel prospecting.

90% of your time will be spent on a small set of large federal accounts or contracts. You will build champions, support pilots and enablement, lead demos, conduct training, and help customers operationalize the product successfully. From there, you will expand usage across more teams, workflows, and programs. This role requires someone who can operate independently with customers, earn trust quickly, and speak credibly with technical stakeholders.

You do not need to have been a software engineer or an account executive. You do need enough technical depth to understand developer workflows, develop and run effective demos and training, and handle routine technical conversations without relying on a separate technical counterpart. You also need to be comfortable owning senior external relationships and being accountable for growth within strategic accounts.

In this role, you will:

• Own and grow 1-4 strategic federal accounts, driving adoption, usage expansion, and long-term account success.

• Build relationships across champions, executives, technical leaders, program teams, and end users, and convert early wins into broader deployment.

• Lead technical discovery, tailored demos, pilots, training, and enablement to ensure customer success and ultimately drive greater usage

• Navigate procurement, security, legal, and change-management blockers while supporting joint motions with federal partners, SIs, and OEMs.

Requirements:

• Significant experience in the federal ecosystem, including direct government employment, military service, and/or work at very large federal contracting, systems integrators, OEMs, or adjacent companies.

• Strong track record in customer-facing roles involving strategic accounts, complex stakeholders, and technical products, programs, or deployments.

• Technical credibility with software engineering concepts and developer workflows, with the ability to design and run complex custom demos, lead technical customer conversations, and engage engineering stakeholders independently.

• Strong commercial judgment and account instincts: able to create urgency, drive next steps, and expand accounts through mission success.

• High-agency, fast-learning operator with strong executive presence and willingness to travel as needed.

You may be especially well suited if you:

• Have worked in or sold into very large federal contractors, system integrators, OEMs, or government programs.

• Have owned strategic customer relationships in a technically credible role such as solutions engineering, solutions architecture, deployment, technical account management, or engagement management.

• Are effective with executives, program management teams, and technical users alike, and both enjoy and are good at training, and champion-building.

• Are highly personable, high energy, independent, and have a software engineering background.

Cognition is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities throughout the hiring process - please let us know if you need any.