Capture Lead - Federal

Cognition; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 140,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Cognition in Washington, DC is hiring a Capture Lead to build and own the federal capture engine from identification of pursuits to repeatable, scalable win strategies. You will collaborate across GTM, Mission Success, and Engineering to shape pricing, deal structuring, and contract vehicle strategies.

You will create the capture function from the ground up, manage RFI-to-RFP workflows, and drive measurement through dashboards and playbooks to improve win rates in a fast-paced federal market.

Qualifications

• 4+ years in federal business operations, capture management, or revenue strategy (defense tech, federal SaaS, or government services).
• Fluency in federal procurement processes, contract vehicles, FAR/DFARS, capture lifecycle, and federal sales rhythms.
• Strong analytical foundation to build models, run analyses, and tell a compelling story.
• Proven track record of starting capture programs in fast-moving environments.
• Comfortable operating without a fixed playbook and willing to do hands-on work.
• Based in Washington, DC, or willing to relocate.
• Security clearance preferred or ability to obtain one.

Responsibilities

• Partner with Federal sales leadership on quarterly and annual capture planning.
• Collaborate with GTM, Mission Success, and Engineering on deal structuring, pricing strategy, and negotiation across contract vehicles.
• Track and prioritize contract vehicles (GSA, OTAs, IDIQs, SBIR) and prime/sub relationships.
• Identify and track relevant federal solicitations from RFI to final RFP.
• Build the proposal operations backbone: intake, qualification, bid/no-bid decisions, color team reviews, and compliance.
• Manage relationships with proposal and capture partners supporting RFI-to-RFP responses.
• Develop and maintain proposal collateral and libraries for past performance, capabilities, and pricing.
• Define metrics for federal GTM and build dashboards to surface them.
• Own solicitation response tracking across active pursuits.
• Run red-team/AAR reviews on wins and losses and codify lessons learned.
• Identify bottlenecks and build systems, processes, and tooling to remove them.

Skills

Federal procurement

Capture management

Analytical

Program building

GTM collaboration

Job description

We are an applied AI lab building end-to-end software agents.

We're the makers of Devin, the first AI software engineer.

Our team is extremely 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 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.

About the Role

Cognition is building its federal business, and capture is the engine that drives it. We're hiring a Capture Lead to partner directly with Federal leadership and own that engine end to end—from identifying the right pursuits to standing up the systems that make winning repeatable. This is a builder's role: you'll create the capture function, not inherit one.

What you'll do

Capture strategy & planning

• Partner with Federal sales leadership on quarterly and annual capture planning

• Partner with GTM, Mission Success, and Engineering on deal structuring, pricing strategy, and negotiation across contract vehicles

• Track and prioritize contract vehicle strategy (GSA, OTAs, IDIQs, SBIR pathways, prime/sub relationships)

Pursuit & proposal operations

• Identify and track relevant federal solicitations, from initial RFI through final RFP

• Build the operational backbone for proposal response: intake, qualification, bid/no-bid decisioning, color team review cadence, and compliance

• Manage relationships with proposal and capture partners supporting RFI-to-RFP response on Cognition's behalf

• Build and maintain proposal collateral, and maintain the past performance, capabilities, and pricing libraries that compound across pursuits

GTM systems & performance

• Define the metrics that matter for a federal GTM motion and build dashboards that surface them

• Own solicitation response tracking across active pursuits

• Run the red-team/AAR process on wins and losses; turn lessons learned into repeatable best practices

Cross-functional execution

• Identify operational bottlenecks and build the systems, processes, and tooling to remove them

What we're looking for

• 4+ years of experience in federal business operations, capture management, or revenue strategy at a defense tech, federal SaaS, or government services company

• Deep fluency in federal procurement: contract vehicles, working knowledge of FAR/DFARS, capture lifecycle, and the rhythm of federal sales cycles

• Strong analytical foundation—you can build the model, run the analysis, and tell the story

• Track record of working in and building capture programs from scratch in a fast-moving environment

• Comfort operating without a playbook, and a low ego about doing the work yourself

• Based in Washington, DC, or willing to relocate

• Security clearance preferred, or ability to obtain one

What success looks like in the first year

• A functioning bid/no-bid and proposal process with clear ownership

• Live pipeline visibility and win/loss reporting leadership actually uses

• A measurable improvement in win rate or pursuit efficiency

Equal Opportunity

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.