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
Key Responsibilities
- Own end-to-end product quality across AI workflows: Test Windsurf and Devin across onboarding flows, chat interactions, multi-file edits, agentic task execution, and autonomous workflows—thinking like a developer and testing like a user.
- Design and execute comprehensive test strategies: Build and run functional, regression, integration, exploratory, and E2E test plans across product surfaces and releases.
- Break down complex flows into testable scenarios: Identify edge cases, race conditions, state recovery failures, and real-world usage patterns that only emerge in production-like behavior.
- Issue reproduction, documentation, and debugging: Reproduce, document, and debug issues across layers—distinguishing between UI defects, orchestration/system issues, and unexpected AI behavior; work with engineering and product to drive resolution.
- Release readiness and quality bar ownership: Partner with engineering and product to define “done,” set quality standards, and ensure releases meet the expectations of real developers.
- Build scalable QA processes and automation: Establish QA playbooks, test processes, and automation where it has leverage; help evolve CI/CD and testing practices as the product scales.
Qualifications
Must-Have
- 5+ years of QA/Test Engineering experience testing complex product workflows (multi-step user journeys, cross-surface interactions, and E2E behavior).
- Deep expertise in functional, regression, exploratory, integration, and end-to-end testing methodologies.
- Strong developer mindset: comfortable reading/writing code (Python, TypeScript, or similar), navigating codebases, and reasoning about systems.
- User-first testing approach: you test from the perspective of real users, not just against a spec.
- Exceptional attention to detail and strong debugging instincts; able to communicate clearly and precisely in bug reports and triage.
- Familiarity with CI/CD and test automation frameworks; comfort working in fast-moving, release-driven environments.
- Schedule flexibility: overlap with US time zones required; release cycles may require weekend availability.
Strong Plus
- Experience testing AI-powered products with non-deterministic outputs; ability to evaluate quality when responses vary.
- Experience testing IDE plugins/extensions or developer tools (VS Code extensions, CLIs, code review systems).
- Familiarity with AI coding tools (Windsurf, Copilot, Cursor, Devin, etc.) and informed opinions on what “good” looks like.
- Prior software engineering background with shipped production code.
Equal Opportunity
Cognition is an equal opportunity employer. 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. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities throughout the hiring process - please let us know if you need any.