Workplace & Facilities Lead (West Coast)

Ativesite; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Cognition is seeking a senior Workplace & Facilities Lead to manage our San Francisco office and the facilities team. You will own operations end-to-end, grow the team, and build systems, vendors, and structure to support rapid scale.

You will partner with cross-functional teams to plan headcount growth, space needs, and large events, while maintaining a high standard for employee experience in a dynamic tech environment.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in workplace, facilities, or real estate operations, including 3+ years managing teams.
• Experience running facilities at a fast-growing tech company or in a high-end hospitality environment
• Strong vendor management and contract negotiation skills
• Comfortable owning a budget and making tradeoffs
• Calm, decisive leader who can handle incidents and competing priorities
• Flexible schedule, including some Friday nights and weekends
• Experience opening new offices or managing build-outs is a plus

Responsibilities

• Lead the facilities team with coaching and clear ownership
• Build staffing and coverage plans across weekdays, evenings, and weekends
• Hire for new roles as the team and office footprint grow
• Own building operations, maintenance, security coordination, and space readiness
• Manage key vendor relationships (custodial, security, maintenance, culinary) including contracts and SLAs
• Build and manage the facilities budget and track spend against plan
• Set up preventive maintenance, issue tracking, and escalation paths
• Partner with other teams on space planning and headcount growth
• Support large events and offsites from a facilities and logistics standpoint
• Set the standard for a well-run Cognition office and use data to drive improvements

Skills

Facilities leadership

Vendor management

Budget management

Staff management

Operational excellence

Incident management

Flexibility

Office build-outs

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

We’re hiring a Workplace & Facilities Lead to manage our West Coast workplace and the facilities team that keeps our San Francisco office running.

This is a senior, hands-on leadership role. You’ll own facilities operations end to end, manage and grow the existing facilities team, and make sure the office runs smoothly every day, including Friday nights and weekends when the team is still here. As we scale quickly, you’ll build the systems, vendors, and team structure that let our workplace keep up.

What You’ll Do

Lead the facilities team

• Manage, coach, and grow the existing facilities team, with clear ownership and expectations

• Build staffing and coverage plans across weekdays, evenings, and weekends

• Hire for new roles as the team and office footprint grow

Own facilities operations

• Own building operations, maintenance, security coordination, and space readiness

• Manage key vendor relationships (custodial, security, maintenance, culinary), including contracts, SLAs, and performance

• Build and manage the facilities budget and track spend against plan

• Set up preventive maintenance, issue tracking, and escalation paths so problems get fixed before people notice them

Scale the workplace

• Partner with Jeff on splitting workplace responsibilities and designing the team structure as we grow

• Plan ahead for headcount growth: space planning, moves, build-outs, and new space readiness

• Partner with Employee Experience, Recruiting, Security, and Finance on shared workplace needs

• Support large events and offsites from a facilities and logistics standpoint

Raise the bar on the employee experience

• Set the standard for what a well-run Cognition office looks and feels like, and hold the team to it

• Use employee feedback and data to decide what to fix and improve next

• Step in personally during high-traffic days, major events, and incidents

What we’re looking for

• 8+ years in workplace, facilities, or real estate operations, including 3+ years managing teams

• Experience running facilities at a fast-growing tech company or in a high-end hospitality environment

• Strong vendor management and contract negotiation skills

• Comfortable owning a budget and making tradeoffs

• Calm, decisive leader who can handle incidents and competing priorities

• Flexible schedule, including some Friday nights and weekends

• Experience opening new offices or managing build-outs is a plus

Why this role matters

Our office is where our team builds, meets candidates, and hosts customers. As we grow, the workplace has to scale with us without losing what makes it feel like Cognition. This role owns that: you’ll lead the team that keeps our San Francisco office running, set the standard for how it operates, and build the foundation for our next phase of growth.

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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