Federal Security Officer

We are an applied AI lab building end-to-end software agents. We're the makers of Devin, the first AI software engineer. Our team is extremely 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 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.

This is a rare opportunity to build a security program from the ground up. As Cognition's founding Facility Security Officer, you will stand up, own, and run the industrial security program that enables our rapidly growing federal business — supporting customers across the U.S. Government, including NASA JPL, the Social Security Administration, and the Department of War, as well as the defense industrial base. You will be the appointed FSO of record with the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA), responsible for establishing and maintaining our facility clearance (FCL), administering personnel security clearances for a fast-scaling cleared workforce, and ensuring day-to-day compliance with the National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual (NISPOM, 32 CFR Part 117). You will work directly with federal sales, deployed engineering, legal, and people operations to make sure security is an enabler of the mission, not a bottleneck. Because you are first, you will define the playbook: the processes, tooling, and culture of security at a company that moves fast and holds itself to a high bar. Your judgment will shape how Cognition scales cleared work across programs, facilities, and classification levels.

Serve as the appointed FSO under 32 CFR Part 117 (NISPOM), owning the establishment, maintenance, and administration of Cognition's facility clearance in partnership with DCSA. Administer the personnel security clearance lifecycle end-to-end: initiate, track, and maintain investigations and adjudications in DISS/NBIS, manage periodic reinvestigations and continuous vetting enrollment, and conduct indoctrinations and debriefings. Establish and run the insider threat program as the Insider Threat Program Senior Official (ITPSO), including required training, monitoring processes, and reporting. Prepare for and lead DCSA security vulnerability assessments and annual self-inspections; drive remediation of findings and maintain a posture of continuous review readiness. Develop and deliver required security education: initial briefings, annual refresher training, foreign travel pre-briefs and debriefs, and derivative classification training where applicable. Manage safeguarding of classified information and visits: visit authorization requests, classified meeting support, courier procedures, and (as the program grows) closed area accreditation. Author and maintain security documentation: Standard Practice Procedures (SPP), technology control plans, DD Form 254 review and flow-down for classified contracts, and reporting of change conditions (SF-328, KMP changes) to DCSA. Submit required reports — suspicious contacts, adverse information, security violations, and foreign travel — accurately and on time. Partner with GTM, deployed engineering, and legal on capture and contract execution: advise on facility and personnel clearance requirements in solicitations, and forecast clearance needs against program timelines. Coordinate with IT and security engineering on the physical and procedural controls that support classified and CUI work, including interface with FedRAMP High and DoD IL4/IL5/IL6 environments.

Ownership — you've built a security program from zero and would rather ship a working process today than wait for a perfect one. Judgment under ambiguity —