Founding IT Engineer

Cogent; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Cogent is hiring a Founding IT Engineer to build and own our IT function from the ground up. You’ll stand up endpoints, identity, and vendor management across offices in San Francisco and New York, with a growing remote workforce. This in-person role requires hands-on ownership four days a week in SF.

You’ll automate with Python, use AI-assisted tools daily, and set security guardrails company-wide, enabling non-technical teammates to self-serve securely while maintaining rigorous controls.

Qualifications

• Experience founding or building an IT function from zero at a fast-moving company.
• Security-first mindset from working in a high-security environment.
• Strong scripting and automation skills in Python or similar.
• AI-native in practice with daily use of AI-assisted tooling while maintaining security controls.
• Project management instincts for prioritization and process.
• Hands-on IC role building, supporting, and responding to issues.

Responsibilities

• Build and own IT function from the ground up, including endpoints, identity, access control, and vendor management.
• Stand up systems, automation, and processes to scale productivity and security across SF and NYC offices.
• Manage on-call support and end-user ticketing for rapid issue resolution.
• Develop automation to replace repetitive work using Python, n8n, or Zapier.
• Define guardrails for AI tool usage and create secure self-serve workflows.

Skills

Founding IT

Automation

Python

Security-first

AI-native

Project management

Hands-on IC

Tools

Google Workspace

Slack

Linear

Microsoft 365

n8n

Zapier

UniFi

Job description

About Cogent Security

Cogent is an Applied AI Lab building the next generation of AI agents for cybersecurity. AI has fundamentally changed how attacks happen, allowing malicious actors to operate at unprecedented speed and scale. Cogent's "AI Taskforce" assesses petabytes of enterprise data to remediate these issues before critical breaches occur.

To stay at the cutting edge, we blend frontier research with real-world execution. Alongside our core product work, Cogent Research serves as our applied AI lab, providing the research horsepower needed to make truly agentic security workflows a reality. We partner with Fortune 500 companies to secure some of the most complex production environments in the world.

We're backed by Greylock & Bain Capital Ventures, and we've built a team with the best minds in applied AI. Our team is comprised of people from:

• Top universities like Stanford, Berkeley, Penn, Duke, Carnegie Mellon, Waterloo

• Unicorn, high-growth companies like Scale AI, Databricks, Stripe, Tesla, Coinbase

• World class cybersecurity experts from Wiz, Abnormal AI, Zscaler

• Preeminent research labs like Deepmind and SAIL

About the Role

We're hiring a Founding IT Engineer to build and own our IT function from the ground up. You'll stand up the systems, automation, and processes that keep our teams productive and secure as we scale: endpoints, identity, access control, physical infrastructure, and vendor management across offices in San Francisco, New York, and a growing remote workforce.

This role is in person in San Francisco, 4 days a week.

What You’ll Do

• Manage and secure endpoints across our environments - device provisioning, MDM configuration, patching, and fleet-wide inventory tracking

• Own corporate identity and access - SSO, MFA, role-based permissions, and automated provisioning/deprovisioning across the employee lifecycle, from a configured laptop on day one through offboarding

• Run vendor management across our SaaS stack - license provisioning, renewals, and cost tracking for tools like Google Workspace, Slack, Linear, and Microsoft 365

• Manage physical IT infrastructure across our SF and NYC offices - UniFi network switches, routers, access control systems, and cameras

• Handle end-user support and ticketing - you're the person the team calls when something breaks or someone needs access, with on-call availability for issues that can't wait

• Build automation to scale yourself and eliminate repetitive work - Python for custom integrations, workflow platforms like n8n or Zapier for standard orchestration, and AI-assisted tooling where it moves faster

• Define guardrails for AI tool usage across the company, and build internal documentation, tooling, and workflows that let non-technical teammates self-serve common IT needs securely

What We’re Looking For

• Experience founding or building an IT function from zero at a fast-moving company - you've been the first or second IT hire before and know what it takes to stand something up with no existing playbook

• Security-first mindset from working in a high-security environment (fintech, enterprise SaaS, or similar) - you instinctively reach for the more secure option

• Strong scripting and automation skills in Python or similar - you write code to integrate systems, parse and transform data, and replace manual processes

• AI-native in practice - you use tools like Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex daily to write scripts, build workflows, and automate tasks while keeping security controls in place

• Project management instincts that let you operate beyond what a single person can handle through smart prioritization and process

• Hands-on and available - this is an IC role where you're building, supporting, and responding, not managing from a distance

Nice to Have

• Experience with compliance frameworks (SOC 2, ISO 27001) and supporting audits

• Security domain expertise, particularly in vulnerability management

• Windows environment administration at scale