Cognition
Software Engineer
San Francisco
Stay score
odds of building a lasting career here
Sponsors, but it's cap-subject — you still face the weighted lottery (~61% per draw at Level IV). Good if you win; have a cap-exempt backup on your list.
Lottery odds assume a STEM candidate.
Personalize to your clock →H-1B wage level
the lottery is wage-weighted — each level is one more entry
This range already reaches Level IV — the maximum four lottery entries.
DOL prevailing wage, 2026-27 wage year · Software Developers (15-1252) · San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA. Wage level is derived by USCIS from the offered wage, occupation and worksite; the occupation shown is inferred from the job title.
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About the role
- We're the makers of Devin, the first AI software engineer.
- 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.
- You will ship systems that go directly into Devin and Windsurf, two products that millions of developers use to write, debug, and ship code.
Responsibilities
- 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.
Requirements
- This is a role for engineers who want to be close to the frontier, who can move fast without cutting corners, and who believe the next 5 years of software engineering will look fundamentally different from the last 5.
- you have strong opinions about correctness, failure modes, and production behavior.
- Comfort with ambiguity:
- You can make progress on hard problems with incomplete specs, learn fast from results, and course-correct without needing a lot of direction.
- A track record of shipping quickly while maintaining the kind of code quality that a high-density team expects.
- You have dug into how LLMs work, how agents fail, and what it takes to make AI-powered systems behave reliably in the real world.
- Strong Python proficiency:
- Prior experience at a frontier AI lab, applied AI company, or developer tools company
- you know what good looks like in this category.
Compensation
- $260,000 - $300,000 + Significant early-stage equity
Benefits
- We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law.
- Medical, Dental, Vision: Fully paid for you and your dependents
- Perks: Private chef, cozy slippers, endless snacks, and more
Company info
- We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities throughout the hiring process - please let us know if you need any.
- WE ARE AN APPLIED AI LAB BUILDING END-TO-END SOFTWARE AGENTS.
Equal opportunity
- Cognition is an equal opportunity employer.
- equal opportunity employer.
This listing is sourced directly from Cognition's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.