Own the full commercial relationship with U.S. federal customers as a Federal Account Director at Cognition.
Posted by employer 8 months ago
First seen on Joblaze 9 hours ago
Last verified on the company career page 9 hours ago
Skills & Technologies
What you'll build
Must have
Nice to have
AI in the day-to-day
Building Devin is just the first step—our hardest challenges still lie ahead.
Not disclosed in this posting: compensation, years of experience, work arrangement, visa sponsorship.
Joblaze summary
The Federal Account Director at Cognition is responsible for managing the entire lifecycle of commercial relationships with U.S. federal customers, focusing on driving the adoption and success of their AI software, Devin. This role requires a strong technical background and experience in selling complex software solutions to federal organizations, navigating regulatory environments, and ensuring customer satisfaction post-sale. Ideal candidates are those with a proven track record in federal sales, particularly in technical domains, and the ability to thrive in a fast-paced startup atmosphere.
Joblaze insights
Quick facts
From the original posting
As a Federal Account Director, you will own the full commercial relationship and revenue lifecycle across U.S. federal customers and partners, driving adoption and sustained consumption of Devin within mission critical government and national security environments. You will source, close, and operationalize deals, then remain accountable for customer success, adoption, retention, and expansion throughout the life of the account, while feeding direct customer signal back into Cognition’s product and engineering teams.
You will work cross functionally with product, engineering, and leadership to shape Devin for federal use cases, ensure customers realize value from their deployments, and accelerate Cognition’s federal market penetration.
This role requires experience selling highly technical software into complex federal organizations, comfort operating in regulated acquisition environments, and the persistence required to move programs from initial engagement to production deployment and sustained, expanding usage. Account Directors operate as the primary owner of their accounts across both pre sale and post sale engagement.
In this role, you will:
Own the full federal account lifecycle from account targeting and capture strategy through award, onboarding, and expansion, deployment, adoption, consumption, renewal, and expansion
Own revenue and customer outcomes across your portfolio, including both new customer commitments and growth in consumption within existing accounts
Drive revenue across the Dept. of War (DoW), intelligence community (IC), federal civilian agencies, and federal contractors, including large primes (OEMs and system integrators)
Serve as the primary commercial and strategic owner for customers, maintaining executive and operational relationships throughout the life of the account
Navigate complex stakeholder sets including mission owners, technical leadership, contracting officers, security, legal, and executive sponsors
Develop capture strategies across primes, subcontracting paths, OTAs, CSOs, pilots, and direct awards
Translate mission and technical requirements into high-value Devin use cases across software engineering, data, AI, and platform teams
Deliver technically credible demos and engage deeply with customer engineering teams before and after deployment
Drive successful onboarding and production adoption, identifying and resolving barriers that limit customer usage or value realization
Develop account plans that identify opportunities to increase Devin consumption, expand into new teams and use cases, and grow the long term value of each customer relationship
Identify new federal and contractor use cases and provide structured feedback to product and engineering based on both prospective customer needs and observed production usage
Build federal GTM motion including pipeline generation, partner strategy, account management, expansion strategy, and repeatable customer lifecycle process
Requirements
Proven success selling technical software into U.S. federal customers and/or major system integrators/defense prime OEMs, with wins via primes or direct vehicles such as OTAs, CSOs, pilots, or programs of record
Experience owning customer relationships beyond the initial sale, including deployment, adoption, renewal, expansion, or consumption growth
Experience engaging DoW, IC, and or federal civilian agencies in classified or regulated environments
Strong technical background as a software engineer, sales engineer, forward deployed engineer, or equivalent technical fluency
Ability to quickly learn complex technical systems, mission constraints, and acquisition processes
Ability to move fluidly between selling, account strategy, technical problem solving, and customer success depending on what an account requires
Comfortable operating in ambiguous, fast changing startup environments with minimal structure
Strong ownership mindset with bias toward execution and results
You may excel if you:
Have founded or scaled an early stage company
Have closed large, multi-stakeholder enterprise or federal software deals and subsequently grown those relationships
Have experience moving pilots into production within federal environments and driving meaningful adoption and consumption after deployment
Have managed strategic accounts where success was measured by both new revenue and expansion of existing customer usage
Have a computer science or engineering background and moved into GTM to work closer to customers
Thrive in high intensity, high accountability environments where you are expected to own the customer outcome rather than hand the account off after close
Standard company text repeated across Cognition's postings is omitted here.