Delta Engineer - Federal

Cognition.AI; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Cognition.AI, located in Washington, D.C., is looking for a foundational engineer to join its newly formed federal group. This role offers a unique opportunity to influence the technical direction and growth of the organization.

You will tackle complex problems across strategic accounts, own customer deployments, and directly impact product evolution. Ideal candidates have a strong engineering background, proficiency in Python or TypeScript, and experience engaging with government clients.

Qualifications

• Experience working within government or government-focused company.
• Ability to operate cross-functionally in a tech environment.
• Track record of excellence in previous projects.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical depth on complex engagements.
• Own the success of customer accounts and deployments.
• Translate customer pain points into product direction.

Skills

Python

TypeScript

Engineering judgment

Product instinct

Education

Strong engineering foundation

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, 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.

About the Role

This is an unparalleled opportunity to join our team as a foundational engineer in our newly formed federal group. As one of the very first engineers in this critical space, you will not only be instrumental in shaping the technical direction and initial project successes but will also play a key role in the strategic growth and scaling of the entire federal engineering organization, establishing core engineering practices, defining our technical stack for federal clients, and directly influencing the culture of a fast-growing, mission-driven team. Your early contributions and leadership will be essential in defining the trajectory of our federal sector, making this an unparalleled opportunity for high-impact ownership and professional development.

Deployed Engineers bring technical depth to Cognition’s most federal enterprise engagements.

You’ll own a narrow set of strategic accounts, tackling the hardest problems—whether that’s architecting a deployment, building an integration, or debugging something no one else can figure out.

A core part of this role is shaping the product. You'll identify patterns from the field, build on the product edge to unblock customers, and translate those learnings into requirements that inform what core engineering builds next. When customers hit friction that the product doesn’t solve, you’re the person who figures out what should exist—and makes it happen.

You’ll own the technical direction of accounts, making decisions that shape long-term adoption, architecture, and how the Cognition platform evolves in real-world environments.

Core Responsibilities

• Operate across strategic accounts, providing technical depth on complex engagements
• Own the technical direction and success of customer accounts and deployments
• Translate customer pain points into product direction: scope requirements, define solutions, and drive implementation
• Be the connective link between our Federal GTM team and core product engineering teams.
• Build product extensions and integrations using Cognition’s APIs and platform primitives
• Architect and maintain complex enterprise deployments
• Handle escalated technical issues requiring deep debugging or architectural judgment
• Be a credible technical voice to engineering on what the field needs

What We Value

• Technical depth and the judgment that comes from seeing many deployments
• Product instinct — you synthesize feedback into solutions, not just feature requests
• Builder mentality — you’d rather ship something than wait for someone else to build it
• Credibility with engineering teams, both internal and customer-side
• Comfort operating across many contexts simultaneously

Requirements

• Strong engineering foundation
• Have operated cross-functionally—whether at a startup wearing multiple hats or by driving product/commercial thinking at a larger company
• Experience working within the government or working in a government focused company.
• Have a track record of pursuing excellence at high levels, in any domain
• Proficiency in Python, TypeScript, or similar; comfort navigating unfamiliar codebases
• Experience scoping and shipping features in collaboration with product and engineering teams

You might excel if….

• Have built software at companies known for engineering rigor and want broader impact
• Track record in forward-deployed engineering, solutions architecture, or similar technical roles
• Experience with enterprise infrastructure (cloud deployments, networking, security)
• Want to stay close to customers while shaping how the product evolves
• Enjoy hard problems without obvious solutions and the autonomy to figure them out
• Have a high tolerance for ambiguity, intensity, and sustained effort when the problem demands it

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.