At Cognition, an Account Executive does not just manage a pipeline—they act as a strategic partner to engineering leaders, enterprises, and federal agencies navigating the frontier of artificial intelligence. As an applied AI lab building end-to-end software agents, Cognition is pioneering collaborative AI teammates like Devin, the first AI software engineer, and Windsurf, the world's first AI-native IDE. The Account Executive is responsible for taking these highly sophisticated, technical products to market, translating cutting-edge AI capabilities into quantifiable business value for engineering teams.

This role is critical to the company's trajectory because selling autonomous AI agents requires a fundamental shift in how organizations think about headcount, productivity, and software development lifecycles. Rather than selling traditional SaaS licenses, you are selling an autonomous teammate. You will engage with technical stakeholders—ranging from engineering managers and CTOs to defense prime OEMs and federal mission owners—to demonstrate how Devin and Windsurf can execute real-world tasks, accelerate code generation, and solve complex engineering bottlenecks.

Success in this role requires an exceptional blend of technical fluency, strategic business development, and raw drive. Because Cognition is a small, talent-dense startup, you will work closely with the core engineering and product teams, funneling direct customer feedback back into the development loop. You will help build the early go-to-market (GTM) playbook from scratch, defining capture strategies, navigating complex procurement pathways, and establishing repeatable sales cycles in a fast-paced, high-intensity environment.

To succeed in the interview process for an Account Executive position at Cognition, you must prepare for a combination of deep product-focused assessments, strategic market-entry scenarios, and behavioral questions. The questions below represent patterns identified from real candidate experiences and are designed to test your technical aptitude, sales methodology, and alignment with the company's high-intensity culture.

Product & Technical Demonstrations

This category evaluates your ability to quickly master Cognition's products and present their value proposition in a highly credible, hands-on manner.

• "Walk me through a live demonstration of Devin. How would you explain its autonomous reasoning capabilities to a highly skeptical engineering lead?"
• "If a prospect is already using basic code assistants like GitHub Copilot or ChatGPT, how do you differentiate Windsurf and Devin?"

Preparing for an interview at Cognition requires a highly proactive mindset. Because the company builds cutting-edge AI technology, interviewers will expect you to have a strong foundational understanding of software engineering workflows and AI developer tools. You should spend time using Windsurf, researching Devin's public use cases, and understanding the core challenges engineering teams face today.

Technical Fluency & Product Mastery – You must be able to speak the language of software engineers. Interviewers will evaluate your ability to understand how developers use AI code generation and your comfort level delivering hands-on, technically credible product demonstrations.

Strategic Problem-Solving – Cognition values simplifiers who can break down complex organizational challenges. You will be assessed on how you structure your market-entry strategies, identify key stakeholders, and navigate complex, multi-layered sales cycles.

Grit & Execution Mindset – As an early-stage company, Cognition looks for self-starters who thrive under pressure. You need to demonstrate a track record of high performance, intense curiosity, and the persistence required to win consistently in a fast-paced environment.

Value-Driven Communication – You must be able to move fluidly between high-level business value conversations with executives and deep-dive technical discussions with engineers. Your communication style should be direct, structured, and free of unnecessary fluff.

The interview process at Cognition is designed to be highly interactive, rigorous, and respectful of your time. Candidates frequently describe the process as somewhat unorthodox but highly genuine, focusing heavily on hands-on capabilities rather than just theoretical discussions. The hiring team is deeply passionate about the product and will look for that same energy and intellectual curiosity in you.

You can expect the process to move quickly, beginning with a conversational screen to assess your background, motivation, and cultural alignment. From there, the process shifts rapidly into practical assessments. You will meet with key management, future sales colleagues, and engineering leaders who want to understand how you think, how you handle product demonstrations, and how you approach complex market challenges.

A unique aspect of the Cognition process is the emphasis on practical product interaction. Rather than just asking you to talk about your past sales, interviewers will often share current market information, demonstrate Devin or Windsurf to you, and then ask you to perform a demonstration yourself or explain how you would position it to a target account.

The visual timeline above outlines the typical stages a candidate progresses through, starting from the initial application and screening phases to the highly interactive onsite demonstrations and final executive alignment. Candidates should use this timeline to pace their preparation, ensuring they are ready to pivot from high-level behavioral discussions to hands-on product deep dives by the middle of the process. While the exact steps may vary slightly depending on the specific track (such as commercial enterprise versus federal sales), the emphasis on technical fluency and practical demonstration remains constant across all paths.

To stand out during the Cognition interview loop, you must understand the specific competencies you will be evaluated on. The hiring team is looking for exceptional talent that can immediately contribute to revenue growth while maintaining high technical credibility.

Interactive Product Demonstrations

This is one of the most critical components of the evaluation. Cognition's products are highly technical, and you cannot sell them using generic sales scripts. You must be able to showcase the product's capabilities in real-time, handle unexpected inputs, and articulate the value of autonomous AI agents.

Be ready to go over:

• Feature Walkthroughs – Explaining how Devin plans, reasons, and executes software engineering tasks end-to-end.
• Handling Failure Modes – How you maintain control of a customer meeting when an AI agent encounters a bug or takes an unexpected path during a live demo.
• Value Translation – Translating raw technical features of Windsurf (like its AI-native system context) into concrete time-saving metrics for an engineering manager.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Explaining how Devin handles containerized environments, interacts with terminal commands, or reads complex codebases to find bugs.

Example scenarios:

• "You are demonstrating Devin to a skeptical engineering lead. During the live demo, the agent gets stuck in an infinite loop trying to install a dependency. How do you handle this live in front of the customer?"
• "Show us how you would pitch Windsurf to a team of developers who are highly protective of their existing local IDE setups."

Market Penetration & Capture Strategy

Whether you are targeting enterprise accounts or federal agencies, you must prove you can build a pipeline where no established playbook exists. You will be evaluated on your ability to research accounts, map complex organizational structures, and identify executive sponsors.

Be ready to go over:

• Multi-Channel Outreach – Designing highly personalized, technically rich cold outreach sequences across email, LinkedIn, and phone.
• Stakeholder Mapping – Navigating complex corporate or government hierarchies to find the true decision-makers and technical champions.
• Deal Progression – Moving a prospect from an initial curiosity-driven meeting to a structured, paid pilot program.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Structuring Other Transaction Authorities (OTAs), Commercial Solutions Openings (CSOs), or partnering with large system integrators for federal deals.

Example scenarios:

• "Walk us through your first 30 days of building a pipeline for Devin within a list of Fortune 500 enterprise accounts."
• "How would you structure a pilot program for a major defense contractor to ensure they successfully transition to a production contract?"

Technical Stakeholder Engagement

To sell to engineering teams, you must build immediate trust. If you cannot hold a peer-to-peer conversation with a senior software engineer or system architect, you will struggle to progress deals.

Be ready to go over:

• Developer Workflows – Understanding git workflows, CI/CD pipelines, and common developer pain points.
• AI Tooling Landscape – Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of existing developer tools, including Copilot, ChatGPT, and Cursor.
• Objection Handling – Addressing developer concerns regarding code security, IP ownership, and the accuracy of AI-generated code.

Example scenarios:

• "An engineering director expresses deep concern about security and data privacy regarding Devin accessing their proprietary codebase. How do you address this objection?"
• "How do you respond to an engineer who says, 'I tried AI coding assistants before, and they just write buggy code that takes me longer to fix'?"

As an Account Executive at Cognition, your primary objective is to drive revenue growth and accelerate the adoption of Devin and Windsurf. Because the company is in an early, high-growth phase, your day-to-day work will extend far beyond traditional sales activities, requiring a highly collaborative and entrepreneurial approach.

• Full-Cycle Sales Ownership – You will own the entire sales lifecycle, from initial prospecting and account targeting to structuring deals, onboarding customers, and driving post-sale expansion.
• High-Impact Product Demonstrations – You will conduct highly interactive, technically credible demonstrations of Devin and Windsurf for technical leaders, developers, and executive sponsors.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration – You will work hand-in-hand with core engineering, product, and leadership teams to feed direct customer signals back into the development loop, shaping the product roadmap based on real-world use cases.
• Pipeline Sourcing & Outreach – You will design and execute sophisticated multi-channel outreach strategies (LinkedIn, email, warm introductions, and events) to engage high-level prospects and build a healthy pipeline.
• Navigating Regulated Environments – For federal-focused roles, you will navigate complex compliance, security, and acquisition processes to secure pilots and programs of record across the Department of Defense, intelligence community, and federal civilian agencies.