Special Projects Engineer - Europe

at Cognition · Coding AI · London, United Kingdom · Customer Engineering

This role is for an engineer at an applied AI lab focused on building end-to-end software agents, specifically the AI software engineer Devin and the AI-native IDE Windsurf. The position emphasizes translating real-world customer pain into product improvements and hands-on implementations, requiring a founder mindset, high agency, and a strong engineering foundation.

What you'd actually do

  1. Owning end-to-end implementations with our most strategic customers.
  2. Understanding customer pain points deeply and translating them into solutions and product improvements.
  3. Being a force multiplier by building internal tools and processes that improve the operational efficiency of GTM and EPD.

Skills

Required

  • Strong engineering foundation (e.g., Computer Science, Mathematics, or related technical discipline)
  • 2+ years of experience or equivalent startup/founder exposure

Nice to have

  • Founder mindset
  • High agency and initiative
  • Willingness and interest to travel as needed to client sites

What the JD emphasized

  • end-to-end implementations
  • customer pain points
  • solutions and product improvements
  • internal tools and processes
  • Founder mindset
  • High agency and initiative
  • Strong engineering foundation

Other signals

  • building end-to-end software agents
  • makers of Devin, the first AI software engineer
  • AI that can reason on real-world tasks
Read full job description

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

Equal parts Engineering, Product, and GTM – perfect for a former founder or aspiring one. You’ll translate real-world pain into product improvements, hands-on implementations, and measurable impact, by whatever means necessary.

Core Responsibilities:

  • Owning end-to-end implementations with our most strategic customers.
  • Understanding customer pain points deeply and translating them into solutions and product improvements.
  • Being a force multiplier by building internal tools and processes that improve the operational efficiency of GTM and EPD.

What We Value:

  • Founder mindset. Thrives in ambiguity, takes ownership end-to-end, and focuses on solving real problems—not just shipping code.
  • High agency and initiative. Comfortable making decisions independently and moving projects forward with minimal oversight.
  • Willingness and interest to travel as needed to client sites. Ability to travel up to 25%.

What We Require:

  • Strong engineering foundation (e.g., Computer Science, Mathematics, or related technical discipline).

  • 2+ years of experience or equivalent startup/founder exposure.

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.