Devops Engineer, Federal

Cognition; Washington (District of Columbia); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Cognition is building an applied AI lab focused on end-to-end software agents. This role sits in our newly formed federal group as a foundational engineer, shaping technical direction, deployment strategy, and platform evolution for federal clients.

You will own deployability and operability, influence core engineering practices, and work closely with customer teams to ensure secure, compliant, and scalable deployments across environments.

Qualifications

• Strong engineering foundation with experience building and maintaining distributed systems.
• 2+ years of experience as a software engineer.
• Experience with government-focused work or in a government-enabled environment.
• Experience implementing federal security and compliance controls.
• Proficiency in Python or TypeScript; able to read unfamiliar codebases.

Responsibilities

• Architect and own end-to-end lifecycle of federal deployments.
• Collaborate with customer engineering and GTM teams to define deployment scope.
• Provide technical depth on deployment, security, and architecture.
• Contribute to core product code to improve deployability and reliability.
• Translate field learnings into product requirements.
• Build integrations and automation using Cognition APIs.
• Bridge Federal team and core infra teams.
• Handle escalations and provide architectural judgment.

Skills

Distributed systems

Software engineering

Cross-functional collaboration

Security-conscious design

Problem solving under ambiguity

Tools

Python

TypeScript

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.

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.

Federal DevOps Engineers are full-stack deployment experts who own and maintain the technical lifecycle of our most important federal enterprise deployments.

You’ll own a narrow set of strategic deployments, working directly with customer engineering teams to scope out complex deployments, ensure compliance with security controls, and implement any needed platform modifications.

A core part of this role is shaping the product from a deployability and operability standpoint. You will make changes directly to the core codebase to ensure our products can be deployed in a variety of environments easily and reliably. You'll identify deployment patterns from the field 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 our deployments, making decisions that shape long-term adoption, architecture, and how the Cognition platform evolves in real-world environments.

Core Responsibilities

• Architect, own, and maintain the end-to-end technical lifecycle of complex, mission-critical federal enterprise deployments and their environments.

• Work directly with customer engineering and GTM teams to define deployment scope, ensuring compliance with security controls and federal regulations.

• Provide technical depth on strategic deployments; serving as the trusted expert on deployment, security, and platform architecture.

• Contribute directly to the core product codebase to improve deployability, operability, and reliability across a variety of environments.

• Translate field learnings and customer pain points into actionable product direction: scope requirements, define solutions, and drive implementation.

• Build product extensions, integrations, and automation using Cognition’s APIs and platform primitives to unblock deployments.

• Serve as the key technical and connective link between the Federal team and core infrastructure engineering teams.

• Handle escalated technical issues and provide architectural judgment requiring deep debugging and systems analysis.

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

• An automation-first mindset—you look to engineer repeatable solutions to operational challenges.

• A collaborative approach to problem-solving, bridging the gap between internal and external teams.

• Comfort operating across many contexts simultaneously

Requirements

• Strong engineering foundation with a proven ability to build, debug, and maintain complex, distributed systems.

• 2+ years of experience as a software engineer.

• Experience working within the government or working in a government focused company.

• Direct experience in, implementing compliance and security controls required for federal or highly regulated environments.

• Proficiency in Python, TypeScript, or similar; comfort navigating unfamiliar codebases

• Have a track record of pursuing excellence at high levels, in any domain

• Have operated cross-functionally—whether at a startup wearing multiple hats or by driving product/commercial thinking at a larger company

You might excel if….

• Have built or contributed to software at companies known for engineering rigor and want the broader impact of a foundational role.

• Enjoy hard, ambiguous problems without obvious solutions and thrive on the autonomy to figure them out.

• Have a high tolerance for ambiguity, intensity, and sustained effort when the mission-critical nature of the work 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.