Federal Account Director

Cognition; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 130,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Cognition is an applied AI lab building Devin, the first AI software engineer, and seeks a Federal Account Director to own the full commercial relationship across U.S. federal customers.

You will source, close, and operationalize deals, then ensure customer success, adoption, retention, and expansion throughout the account lifecycle. You’ll collaborate with product, engineering, and leadership to tailor Devin for federal use cases, drive adoption, and accelerate market penetration across DoW,

Qualifications

• Proven success selling technical software into U.S. federal customers and/or major system integrators/defense prime OEMs, with wins via primes or direct vehicles such as OTAs, CSOs, pilots, or programs of record.
• Experience owning customer relationships beyond initial sale, including deployment, adoption, renewal, expansion, or consumption growth.
• Experience engaging DoW, IC, and/or federal civilian agencies in classified or regulated environments.

Responsibilities

• Own the full federal account lifecycle from targeting to award, onboarding and expansion.
• Own revenue and customer outcomes across your portfolio, including new commitments and growth in consumption.
• Drive revenue across DoW, IC, and federal civilian agencies and prime contractors, including large primes.

Skills

Federal sales

Strategic accounts

Sales in regulated env

Technical fluency

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

As a Federal Account Director, you will own the full commercial relationship and revenue lifecycle across U.S. federal customers and partners, driving adoption and sustained consumption of Devin within mission critical government and national security environments. You will source, close, and operationalize deals, then remain accountable for customer success, adoption, retention, and expansion throughout the life of the account, while feeding direct customer signal back into Cognition’s product and engineering teams.

You will work cross functionally with product, engineering, and leadership to shape Devin for federal use cases, ensure customers realize value from their deployments, and accelerate Cognition’s federal market penetration.

This role requires experience selling highly technical software into complex federal organizations, comfort operating in regulated acquisition environments, and the persistence required to move programs from initial engagement to production deployment and sustained, expanding usage. Account Directors operate as the primary owner of their accounts across both pre sale and post sale engagement.

In this role, you will:

• Own the full federal account lifecycle from account targeting and capture strategy through award, onboarding, and expansion, deployment, adoption, consumption, renewal, and expansion

• Own revenue and customer outcomes across your portfolio, including both new customer commitments and growth in consumption within existing accounts

• Drive revenue across the Dept. of War (DoW), intelligence community (IC), federal civilian agencies, and federal contractors, including large primes (OEMs and system integrators)

• Serve as the primary commercial and strategic owner for customers, maintaining executive and operational relationships throughout the life of the account

• Navigate complex stakeholder sets including mission owners, technical leadership, contracting officers, security, legal, and executive sponsors

• Develop capture strategies across primes, subcontracting paths, OTAs, CSOs, pilots, and direct awards

• Translate mission and technical requirements into high-value Devin use cases across software engineering, data, AI, and platform teams

• Deliver technically credible demos and engage deeply with customer engineering teams before and after deployment

• Drive successful onboarding and production adoption, identifying and resolving barriers that limit customer usage or value realization

• Develop account plans that identify opportunities to increase Devin consumption, expand into new teams and use cases, and grow the long term value of each customer relationship

• Identify new federal and contractor use cases and provide structured feedback to product and engineering based on both prospective customer needs and observed production usage

• Build federal GTM motion including pipeline generation, partner strategy, account management, expansion strategy, and repeatable customer lifecycle process

Requirements

• Proven success selling technical software into U.S. federal customers and/or major system integrators/defense prime OEMs, with wins via primes or direct vehicles such as OTAs, CSOs, pilots, or programs of record

• Experience owning customer relationships beyond the initial sale, including deployment, adoption, renewal, expansion, or consumption growth

• Experience engaging DoW, IC, and or federal civilian agencies in classified or regulated environments

• Strong technical background as a software engineer, sales engineer, forward deployed engineer, or equivalent technical fluency

• Ability to quickly learn complex technical systems, mission constraints, and acquisition processes

• Ability to move fluidly between selling, account strategy, technical problem solving, and customer success depending on what an account requires

• Comfortable operating in ambiguous, fast changing startup environments with minimal structure

• Strong ownership mindset with bias toward execution and results

You may excel if you:

• Have founded or scaled an early stage company

• Have closed large, multi-stakeholder enterprise or federal software deals and subsequently grown those relationships

• Have experience moving pilots into production within federal environments and driving meaningful adoption and consumption after deployment

• Have managed strategic accounts where success was measured by both new revenue and expansion of existing customer usage

• Have a computer science or engineering background and moved into GTM to work closer to customers

• Thrive in high intensity, high accountability environments where you are expected to own the customer outcome rather than hand the account off after close

Our Commitment

Equal Opportunity. Cognition is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of any 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. Cognition also considers applicants with criminal histories consistent with the SF Fair Chance Ordinance and similar local laws.

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