Founding Country Leader - Japan
We are an applied AI lab building end-to-end software agents.
We're the makers of Devin, the first AI software engineer, and Windsurf, the AI-native IDE. Together, they represent our vision for collaborative AI teammates that enable engineers to focus on more interesting problems and empower 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, Palantir, Cursor, Waymo, Tesla, Lunchclub, Modal, Google DeepMind, and Nuro.
Building Devin and Windsurf 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
Country Leader, Tokyo, Japan
As we expand into Asia, Cognition is looking for a founding Country Leader to launch and scale our operations in Japan. This role is for an experienced executive who can build the full Japanese business from scratch. You will lead go-to-market, establish commercial and government partnerships, hire cross-functional teams, build and scale a direct and partnerships team, with the necessary supporting functions and drive Cognition's footprint across the region.
You will be our senior-most leader on the ground in Japan, responsible for setting the strategy, driving revenue, managing the local P and L, and ensuring exceptional customer experience. The ideal candidate combines enterprise sales experience with operational leadership, and has built or scaled high-growth technology organisations in Japan.
What you’ll do
Launch and scale Cognition’s Japan operations as our first senior hire in market
Own country-level P and L, hiring, sales execution, and operational performance
Build and lead a high-performing local team across sales, customer success, engineering, support, and operations
Lead strategic partnerships with Japanese enterprises and government agencies
Drive sales cycles end-to-end and close deals directly and via partneras with key enterprise customers
Partner with our global leadership team to align product-market fit for Japan
Represent Cognition externally in Japan’s business and technology ecosystem
Build scalable internal processes for customer onboarding, implementation, and success
Provide feedback to Product and Engineering on localisation and feature needs
What you’ll bring
10+ years of leadership experience in Japan, ideally at fast-growing software or AI companies
Proven experience launching and scaling operations in new markets
Deep relationships and understanding of Japan’s enterprise and government sectors
Strong enterprise sales, partnerships and GTM experience with a track record of closing complex deals
A blend of strategic thinking and hands-on execution
Fluency in Japanese and English
Experience building cross-functional teams from the ground up with world class talent
Passion for technology, innovation, and shaping the future of work
Nice to have
Experience in AI, developer tools, or enterprise SaaS
Background in engineering or product-led companies
Exposure to high-growth US or global companies expanding into Asia