Engagement Manager - Federal

Cognition•Washington, DC

36d

About The Position

At Cognition, customers are our highest priority. Engagement Managers (EMs) are customer-facing strategic operators who drive adoption, expansion, and long-term success across our most important accounts. On the federal team, that means helping some of the largest and most consequential organizations in the federal ecosystem adopt and scale Devin and Windsurf. This role should still feel recognizably like an EM role, but it sits closer to the revenue line than a traditional post-sales or program-management job. It is mission success, but mission success here is inseparable from account growth, usage expansion, and successful execution on federal contracts. You will be responsible for growing strategic accounts, building trusted relationships, identifying high-value use cases, and turning early wins into durable usage expansion. In practice, this is a selling role. The difference is that the sale is often driven through technical credibility, custom demos, training, account strategy, and relentless follow-through rather than top-of-funnel prospecting. 90% of your time will be spent with a small number of very large accounts. These will often be system integrators, OEMs, and other major federal contractors, though direct federal accounts will also be in scope. You will build champions, help them succeed internally, run technical and executive demos, support pilots and enablement, drive joint go-to-market motions where relevant, and then make sure those motions succeed. Over time, you will help expand usage across more teams, more workflows, and larger contracts. We do not let important federal customers or partners fail because they could not operationalize our product well enough. You will thrive in this role if you have strong federal instincts, like working with customers, can build trust quickly, and can become technically credible fast. The ideal candidate has software-engineering experience. That said, you do not need to have been formally a software engineer if you have hands-on experience with software engineering concepts, codebases, and developer workflows, and can talk about them credibly with technical users. You also do not need to have been an account executive. You do need to be comfortable owning external relationships, driving toward revenue outcomes, and being accountable for whether an account grows.

Requirements

Strong experience in the federal ecosystem, whether in government, military, federal contracting, systems integrators, OEMs, or closely adjacent roles
Proven success in a customer-facing role involving strategic accounts, complex stakeholders, and technical products, programs, or deployments
Strong relationship-management instincts and comfort working with senior external stakeholders
Strong technical acumen with meaningful exposure to software engineering concepts and workflows. Ideal candidate has been a software engineer or similarly hands-on technical operator. Formal software engineering experience is not required, but the candidate must be able to speak credibly about software engineering concepts, understand code-related customer conversations, and become technically credible with our products quickly
Ability to sell through ambiguity: build the case, create urgency, drive next steps, and keep complex motions moving
Ability to operate as both account growth owner and mission-success operator in the same account
Structured, high-agency operator who moves quickly and follows through
Demonstrated ability to learn exceptionally fast
Willingness to travel for conferences, customer meetings, trainings, onsite sessions, and internal coordination

Nice To Haves

have worked in or sold into large federal contractors, systems integrators, OEMs, or government programs
have owned strategic customer relationships without necessarily being the formal quota-carrying AE
have worked in a solutions engineering, deployment strategist, technical account manager, technical program manager, consultant, mission-success, or other hybrid customer-facing role
are comfortable translating between executives, operators, and engineers
enjoy training users, running workshops, and building internal champions
are competitive, highly ambitious, and energized by high-intensity environments

Responsibilities

Own and grow a small number of strategic federal accounts, with a focus on account expansion, usage growth, training, and durable customer adoption
Build deep relationships with champions, executives, technical leaders, and end users across complex organizations
Run high-quality M1 and M2-style demos yourself, tailoring the story to the customer's workflows, constraints, and priorities
Identify promising use cases for Devin and Windsurf and help customers translate early interest into real deployment and sustained usage
Drive horizontal expansion across large, quasi-independent teams within companies by turning one team win into many team wins over time
Support pilots, trainings, enablement sessions, and post-sale execution to ensure customers and partners succeed with the product
Help customers and partners navigate real-world blockers including procurement, security, legal, timing, internal change management, and operational adoption
Contribute to and proactively craft joint go-to-market efforts with systems integrators, OEMs, and other federal ecosystem partners
Act with a zero-fail mentality on the most important federal accounts, deployments, and joint go-to-market motions
Create tight feedback loops between the field and the product team so that customer insights shape roadmap and go-to-market execution