Partner Director Japan

Requirements

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• This role requires a blend of commercial instinct, technical fluency, and deep understanding of how to navigate and influence complex organisations in Japan. IN THIS ROLE,
• YOU WILL: - Build and own Cognition’s partnerships strategy in Japan, identifying high leverage partners across enterprise, SI, cloud, and public sector ecosystems - Source, structure, and close strategic partnership agreements that drive revenue, distribution, and product adoption at scale - Develop joint go to market motions with partners, including co selling, co building, and embedded deployment of Devin within partner ecosystems - Act as the senior relationship owner across key partners, engaging C
• REQUIREMENTS FOR THE ROLE: - Proven track record of building and scaling strategic partnerships in Japan, ideally within enterprise software, AI, or deep tech environments - Strong
• experience working with large enterprises, system integrators, and/or cloud ecosystems in Japan - Ability to navigate Japanese business culture and decision making structures, with credibility at executive level - High level of technical fluency, with the ability to understand and position complex AI and software engineering solutions - Demonstrated ability to structure and close complex, multi party commercial agreements - Thrive in ambiguous, high growth environments, with the ability to operate
• experience working with or within top tier Japanese enterprises, consultancies, or technology providers - Have a background in technical roles (engineering, solutions, or forward deployed) and moved into commercial or partnership leadership - Have successfully driven co sell or ecosystem led growth motions in high growth SaaS or AI companies - Are highly ambitious, competitive, and thrive in high intensity, build mode environments WHY THIS ROLE MATTERS Japan is a critical market for Cognition.