Federal Marketing Lead
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.
Software is how the modern world runs—but there's not enough of it, and too much of what exists isn't good enough. Banks and governments still run COBOL from the 1970s. Budgets go to technical debt and maintenance instead of the features customers actually want. The bottleneck has always been the same: engineering talent is scarce and expensive, and budgets only stretch so far.
AI agents make it possible to build more software, faster, at higher quality—and Cognition is at the center of that shift. We built the first AI software engineer, Devin, are now building a complete platform for AI software development. We're working with some of the world's largest enterprises and governments to multiply what their engineering organizations can deliver. We went from $1M to mid-nine figures in revenue in a year, and are backed by leading investors including Founders Fund, General Catalyst, Lux Capital, and 8VC.
The federal government is one of the highest-impact opportunities for AI software engineering. The U.S. government spends over $100 billion annually on IT, with 80% going to maintenance rather than new capabilities. Engineers are stuck keeping legacy systems running instead of building what's next—while our adversaries build software-defined systems from scratch.
The companies deploying AI agents for software production are pulling ahead. The same is true for nations.
The Role
We're looking for a federal marketer to translate Cognition’s incredible commercial story into a federal-specific narrative and market that narrative across channels. This is a senior individual contributor role reporting to the Head of Product Marketing. You'll work at the intersection of marketing, policy, and sales.
This is a hands-on, cross-functional role. You'll be creating decks, materials, running campaigns, and leading event strategy. You'll work with our federal sales, core marketing, and policy teams. You’ll help prioritize accounts, build the messaging, materials and campaigns to support those accounts, and drive pipeline in coordination with the sales team. You’ll work with our policy team to drive a unified narrative in DC and create content, events, and other assets that reflect that narrative. Finally, you’ll work on our brand awareness in DC: media appearances, content, and events that improve our buyers’ understanding of our business and value props.
What you'll do:
Understand the federal buyer: Develop deep knowledge of federal procurement, buyer personas, and competitive dynamics to inform how we position and sell the Cognition Platform in DC
Build sales & marketing materials: Create the decks, one-pagers, case studies, and web content that help our federal sales team win
Coordinate account marketing: Work with sales to prioritize target accounts and coordinate marketing campaigns that support them—through content, email, events, and direct outreach—coordinating with the central marketing team as needed.
Tell customer stories: Develop case studies and narratives that demonstrate Cognition's federal impact, working within compliance constraints
Drive event strategy & content: Partner with our central events team and sales to produce convenings and summits in DC - ensuring the right people are in the room and the content is compelling.
Connect the functions: Work across policy, sales, and central marketing to ensure Cognition's federal GTM is unified and effective
Represent Cognition in DC: Build relationships with the people who shape federal tech—Hill staff, think tank fellows, defense journalists, staffers etc.
Why this role:
The mission is critical to democracy. Democracies need to win the AI race—and right now, developers in the U.S. government are stuck maintaining legacy software systems while adversaries build from scratch. You'll help change that.
Cognition is the company. We created the category of autonomous software engineering and are the fastest-growing company in American history. We're working with Goldman Sachs, Citi, defense and civilian agencies, and defense primes. Windsurf was the first commercially competitive AI IDE available to the federal government. If you want to learn how a generational AI company gets built, this is the place.
You'll build something from zero. Cognition's federal GTM is early; you’ll be building the revenue engine from scratch.
You should have:
Experience in the federal space—in government, at companies selling to government, or adjacent roles like think tanks, defense media, or policy organizations
Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to translate technical concepts for non-technical audiences
A builder mindset: you're excited to create materials, run campaigns, and ship
Comfort working across functions and navigating ambiguity
Experience in marketing, deployment strategy, or business operations
Comfort in fast-paced, high-intensity environments
Technical background or deep interest in AI and software
Nice to have:
Existing relationships in federal tech, defense, or national security policy
Experience with account-based marketing or enterprise sales enablement