engineering
Posted May 11Product Engineer
at Cognition
San Francisco, United StatesOn-site
Requirements
- WHO WE ARE We are an applied AI lab building end-to-end software agents.
- We're the team behind Devin, the first AI software engineer, and Windsurf, an AI-native IDE.
- These products represent our vision for AI that doesn't just assist engineers, but works alongside them as a genuine teammate.
- Our team is small and talent-dense: world-class competitive programmers, former founders, and researchers from the frontier of AI, including Scale AI, Palantir, Cursor, Google DeepMind, and others.
- ROLE MISSION AI coding is a more mature and competitive market than it was two years ago.
- Meeting that bar across an IDE, a web product, and a CLI requires engineers who can own the full experience, not just the implementation.
- The best product engineers at frontier AI companies are the ones who feel the gap between what exists and what should exist, and then close it.
- Quality is not a final pass; it's built into how you work. - Set the Standard for Agent UX: Define interaction patterns for how developers work alongside AI agents.
- EXCEPTIONAL CANDIDATES HAVE DEMONSTRATED - Full-stack engineering depth: Strong engineering skills with a natural instinct for product quality; you notice when something is off and you fix it. - Developer empathy: Genuine understanding of developer workflows, frustrations, and what delightful tooling actually feels like. - Python, TypeScript, and React proficiency:
- Experience with all three in complex, production-grade products. - Independent product judgment: The ability to make sound product decisions without needing extensive process or sign-off. - UX and Design Obsession: You sweat the details others overlook: micro-interactions, transitions, response times, empty states, because you know that magical product experiences are built from hundreds of small decisions done right. - Developer tools experience:
- experience at a frontier AI lab, applied AI company, or developer tools company; you know what good looks like in this category. - Degree from a top-tier university: BS, MS, or equivalent in Computer Science, Mathematics, Engineering, or a related technical discipline from a highly selective program.
Additional details
- User expectations have risen sharply: developers now expect first-minute magic, polished experiences, and a consistently high quality bar across every surface they touch.