Federal Account Executive

Exafunction, Inc.; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Cognition, an applied AI lab, is seeking a Federal Account Executive to drive revenue growth across U.S. federal customers and partners, sourcing, closing and operationalizing Devin deals in mission-critical government environments.

You will collaborate with product and engineering to tailor Devin for federal use cases, navigate complex acquisition processes, and build a scalable GTM motion through pipelines, pilots, and direct awards.

Qualifications

• Proven success selling technical software into U.S. federal customers and/or major system integrators/defense primes, via primes or direct vehicles (OTAs, CSOs, pilots, programs of record).
• Experience engaging DoW, IC, and federal civilian agencies in classified or regulated environments.
• Strong technical background as a software engineer, sales engineer, FDE, or equivalent fluency.
• Ability to quickly learn complex technical systems, mission constraints, and acquisition processes.
• Comfortable in fast-changing startup environments with minimal structure.
• Strong ownership mindset with bias toward execution and results.

Responsibilities

• Own the full federal sales lifecycle from targetting through award, onboarding, and expansion.
• Drive revenue across DoW, IC, federal civilian agencies, and federal primes, including large OEMs and system integrators.
• Navigate complex stakeholder sets including mission owners, technical leadership, contracting, security, legal, and executives.
• Develop capture strategies across primes, subcontracting paths, OTAs, CSOs, pilots, and direct awards.
• Translate mission and technical requirements into Devin use cases across software engineering, data, AI, and platform teams.
• Deliver technically credible demos and engage with customer engineering teams.
• Identify new federal and contractor use cases and provide feedback to product/engineering.
• Build early federal GTM motion including pipeline generation, partner strategy, and repeatable sales processes.

Skills

Federal sales

DoD/IC experience

Technical fluency

Account leadership

Capture strategies

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. Cognition is building collaborative AI teammates that enable engineers to focus on more interesting problems and empower engineering 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, 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 Executive you will own revenue growth across U.S. federal customers and partners, driving adoption of Devin within mission critical government and national security environments. You will source, close, and operationalize deals 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 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.

In this role, you will:

• Own the full federal sales lifecycle from account targeting and capture strategy through award, onboarding, and expansion

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

• 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

• Identify new federal and contractor use cases and provide structured feedback to product and engineering

• Build early federal GTM motion including pipeline generation, partner strategy, and repeatable sales 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 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

• 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

• Have experience moving pilots into production within federal environments

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

• Thrive in high intensity, high accountability environments