Skip to content
CV Rocket
Get started
How it worksThe enginePricingBlogContactSign in

Open nowPosted 239 days ago

Devops Engineer, Federal — Cognition

a16z portfolio7,337 open roles

Pay
$105,000 – $180,000 a year
Where
Washington DC, United States; Washington DC
Work mode
Hybrid
Get the CV for this job

From $25 per CV, paid once. No subscription.

Your applicationOpen nowDevops Engineer, Federal — Cognitiona16z portfolio · Washington DC, United States; Washington DC

  1. YouYes, apply to this one.

  2. CV RocketCV written for this posting.

  3. 25 readersRecruiter, hiring manager, skeptic. Round after round.

  4. CV RocketApplied on a16z portfolio's own form.

The reply lands in your private mailbox

3×more interviews than doing it yourself with ChatGPT.

The clock on this job

Early applications get read.

8.2% of postings close within 7 days. Measured by our own scanner across the market.

Share of postings closed within
  1. 1.8%1 day
  2. 3.8%3 days
  3. 8.2%7 days
  4. 15.2%14 days
  5. 34.2%30 days
This job: posted 239 days ago

The posting

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.

About the Role

This is an unparalleled opportunity to join our team as a foundational engineer in our newly formed federal group. As one of the very first engineers in this critical space, you will not only be instrumental in shaping the technical direction and initial project successes but will also play a key role in the strategic growth and scaling of the entire federal engineering organization, establishing core engineering practices, defining our technical stack for federal clients, and directly influencing the culture of a fast-growing, mission-driven team. Your early contributions and leadership will be essential in defining the trajectory of our federal sector, making this an unparalleled opportunity for high-impact ownership and professional development.

Federal DevOps Engineers are full-stack deployment experts who own and maintain the technical lifecycle of our most important federal enterprise deployments.

You’ll own a narrow set of strategic deployments, working directly with customer engineering teams to scope out complex deployments, ensure compliance with security controls, and implement any needed platform modifications.

A core part of this role is shaping the product from a deployability and operability standpoint. You will make changes directly to the core codebase to ensure our products can be deployed in a variety of environments easily and reliably. You'll identify deployment patterns from the field and translate those learnings into requirements that inform what core engineering builds next. When customers hit friction that the product doesn’t solve, you’re the person who figures out what should exist—and makes it happen.

You’ll own the technical direction of our deployments, making decisions that shape long-term adoption, architecture, and how the Cognition platform evolves in real-world environments.

Core Responsibilities

  • Architect, own, and maintain the end-to-end technical lifecycle of complex, mission-critical federal enterprise deployments and their environments.
  • Work directly with customer engineering and GTM teams to define deployment scope, ensuring compliance with security controls and federal regulations.
  • Provide technical depth on strategic deployments; serving as the trusted expert on deployment, security, and platform architecture.
  • Contribute directly to the core product codebase to improve deployability, operability, and reliability across a variety of environments.
  • Translate field learnings and customer pain points into actionable product direction: scope requirements, define solutions, and drive implementation.
  • Build product extensions, integrations, and automation using Cognition’s APIs and platform primitives to unblock deployments.
  • Serve as the key technical and connective link between the Federal team and core infrastructure engineering teams.
  • Handle escalated technical issues and provide architectural judgment requiring deep debugging and systems analysis.

What We Value

  • Technical depth and the judgment that comes from seeing many deployments
  • Product instinct — you synthesize feedback into solutions, not just feature requests
  • Builder mentality — you’d rather ship something than wait for someone else to build it
  • Credibility with engineering teams, both internal and customer-side
  • An automation-first mindset—you look to engineer repeatable solutions to operational challenges.
  • A collaborative approach to problem-solving, bridging the gap between internal and external teams.
  • Comfort operating across many contexts simultaneously

Requirements

  • Strong engineering foundation with a proven ability to build, debug, and maintain complex, distributed systems.
  • 2+ years of experience as a software engineer.
  • Experience working within the government or working in a government focused company.
  • Direct experience in, implementing compliance and security controls required for federal or highly regulated environments.
  • Proficiency in Python, TypeScript, or similar; comfort navigating unfamiliar codebases
  • Have a track record of pursuing excellence at high levels, in any domain
  • Have operated cross-functionally—whether at a startup wearing multiple hats or by driving product/commercial thinking at a larger company

You might excel if….

  • Have built or contributed to software at companies known for engineering rigor and want the broader impact of a foundational role.
  • Enjoy hard, ambiguous problems without obvious solutions and thrive on the autonomy to figure them out.
  • Have a high tolerance for ambiguity, intensity, and sustained effort when the mission-critical nature of the work demands it.

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.

From $25, paid onceGet the CV for this job

What happens when you press

One press. We do the rest.

  1. A CV for this posting

    Written against a16z portfolio's own wording, from every piece of relevant proof in your profile.

  2. 25 readers review it

    Recruiter, hiring manager, skeptic and more read every draft, round after round. You get the best round.

    The review screen in CV Rocket: how each CV was read, round by round.

  3. We apply on a16z portfolio's form

    Our application engine gets through the hardest forms there are. Where a question needs you, AI suggests the best answer. Don't want us applying from our IP addresses? Use our Chrome extension: we apply straight from your own browser.

    An application in CV Rocket: every answer filled in on the employer's form.

  4. Every reply, sorted

    a16z portfolio's answer lands in your private mailbox, and we classify it on arrival: interview, question, rejection.

    The CV Rocket inbox: each employer reply classified as an interview, an action or a rejection.

  5. Reply with AI

    AI helps you write the email, checks it and sends it. We show you whether the recruiter read it.

  6. The interview in your calendar

    Full integration with your calendar. The invitation goes straight in.

    An interview invitation in the CV Rocket inbox, added to the candidate's calendar.
Get the CV for this job

From $25 per CV, paid once. No subscription.

Why it works

3×

more interviews than doing it yourself with ChatGPT.

ChatGPT writes a CV and never learns what happened to it. We see every reply. For each CV we know:

  • How it was written, and how the review scored it
  • When we applied, and how long after the posting went up
  • Which posting, which company, which city
  • Who got the interview, and who heard nothing

That is how we know which CVs get called.

Get the CV for this job

From $25 per CV, paid once. No subscription.

The numbers game

More applications. More interviews.

Every application goes out with its own CV, written for that posting and paid once. Send enough of them and the law of large numbers finds you the job.

Get the CV for this job
By hand5–10
With CV Rocket100
applications a day

Nearby

Live postings like this one

Same employer first, then the same role elsewhere.

Before you press

Straight answers

Get the CV for this job

From $25 per CV, paid once. No subscription.

What if my background isn't good enough?

We make the most of the background you have. The CV uses every piece of relevant proof your profile holds, and one of the 25 readers reads your whole profile and flags what the CV left out.

Do you really apply for me?

Yes, on the employer's own form, the hardest ones included. Where a question needs you, you answer it right there and AI suggests the best answer. Don't want us applying from our IP addresses? Use our Chrome extension: we apply straight from your own browser.

Is it a subscription?

No. You pay once per CV, from $25. Every application goes out with its own CV, written for that posting.

One job. One CV.
Paid once.

Pick the posting you want. We write for it, apply for you and catch the reply.

Get the CV for this job

From $25 per CV, paid once. No subscription.