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Cognition interview, decoded.

Cognition's CEO, Scott Wu, has described the company's engineering interview in one line: people build their own Devin in eight hours, and the team sees how far they get. Devin is Cognition's autonomous coding agent, so the exercise is the product itself, rebuilt from nothing under a clock. Most of the company's open engineering roles are customer-facing deployed engineers, and their loop is written up in more detail: a take-home done inside Devin, a presentation of a past project, conversations with leadership, a pitch to a panel playing executives, and a live customer call.

Cognition makes Devin and, since buying it in July 2025, the Windsurf editor. It raised more than $1B at a $26B valuation in May 2026, and Bloomberg reported on 2 September 2026 that a new round would value it at about $47B.

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The questions for your exact Cognition role and level.

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Interviewing at Cognition? Below are the questions candidates report. For the ones your exact role and level will get, paste the posting. Your first mock is free.

01

Who Cognition hires

Different tracks, one bar

Most open engineering roles are in customer engineering: deployed engineers, applied AI engineers, partner deployed engineers and AI support engineers, in San Francisco, Washington DC, London, Tokyo, Singapore, Sydney, Seoul, São Paulo, Mexico City, India and Doha. The research and development team hires software, infrastructure, data, security and site reliability engineers, a product engineer, and research engineers for post-training, mid-training and ML infrastructure, all in San Francisco. The ads say the founding team includes competitive programmers and people from Scale AI, Palantir, Cursor, Waymo, Tesla and Google DeepMind.

Two loops are on the record. The build exercise belongs to the core engineering team; the deployed engineer loop is about getting Devin adopted inside a customer.

  • Track · R&D

    Software and research engineering

    The engineering interview Scott Wu described in August 2025: build your own Devin in eight hours. The software engineer ad describes the work the exercise stands for: tool use, context management, multi-step planning, subagents and sandboxed code execution, shipped into Devin and Windsurf. Questions reported in September 2026 ask you to build an event-driven automation on the Devin API and about your experience with agentic development.

  • Track · FDE

    Deployed engineering

    Deployed, applied AI and partner deployed engineers embed with a customer's engineers and get Devin into real production work. The loop: recruiter screen, a take-home inside Devin with little coding, a 45-minute presentation of a past project, one-on-ones with leadership, a pitch to a mock executive panel, and a case-study call with a simulated customer.

02

What is the Cognition interview process?

Round by round

The deployed engineer loop below comes from Exponent's guide, updated in September 2026 from interviewer and candidate accounts. The build exercise comes from the CEO himself, in August 2025, when core engineering was about 19 people; the team has grown since, so ask your recruiter what the build looks like now.

01
Recruiter screen
A phone call

Your background, what you want next, and for deployed roles why forward deployed engineering. Deployed candidates are judged here on explaining technical work to someone who is not technical.

02
Build your own Devin
About eight hours

Build an agent that writes and runs code, then show how far it got. Candidates are measured on how far they get, so a working loop early beats a clever design that never runs.

Engineering
03
Take-home inside Devin
Hands-on, in the product

Set up Devin and run a realistic workflow in it. Exponent's guide says it is not a traditional coding challenge and involves very little code: it tests whether you understand the product the way a customer will need to.

Deployed engineering
04
Project presentation
About 45 minutes, slides optional

A past project, told for people outside your field: why it mattered in the first five minutes, then the decisions, what you owned, and how you handle follow-up questions.

Deployed engineering
05
Leadership one-on-ones
Conversations with VPs and engineering leaders

What motivates you, a project you owned end to end, and how steady you stay when someone senior pushes back.

06
Executive pitch
A presentation to a panel playing a customer's executives

Sell Devin in business terms: faster delivery, lower cost, more ambitious work. Features only count when they connect to an outcome.

Deployed engineering
07
Customer case call
Timed preparation, then a live simulated call

Structure an unfamiliar customer problem quickly, then adapt when the customer's questions do not follow your plan.

Deployed engineering
03

What Cognition screens for

What every round is really testing

The ads for every engineering role list the same things, and the deployed engineer loop is built to test them in front of a customer.

  • Customer empathy: how engineers actually work and what helps them
  • Ownership of the outcome a customer sees
  • Technical curiosity about unfamiliar systems
  • A bias toward execution, from problem to working solution quickly
  • Fluency with agents: how you use them, and how you would build one
04

Cognition interview questions

Candidate-reported themes

These are the questions reported on Exponent for Cognition, most of them for deployed engineers. The engineering ones are recent and few, which matches a loop built around one long exercise.

Behavioural & motivation

  • Why forward deployed engineering?
  • Walk me through a technical feature you led.
  • How much are you owning on a deployment?
  • Present a past technical project to a non-technical audience.
  • How would you rank yourself in terms of percentile?
  • Tell me about yourself.

Technical

  • Build an agent: A coding agent from nothing: a model in a loop with tools, a sandbox to run code, and a way to plan multi-step work
  • The Devin API: Reported September 2026: build an event-driven automation on the Devin API that solves an engineering workflow problem
  • Agentic development: How you use agents in your own work, and where they fail
  • Your product's architecture: Reported for software engineers: walk through the technical architecture of the product you work on now
  • Deployment and integration: For deployed engineers: getting an agent working inside a customer's repositories, tools and security rules

These are the reported themes — your loop is role-specific. Paste the actual posting and Calibrd predicts the questions for that exact role and level.

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05

Pay

What the offer looks like
Applied AI Engineer (posted)$180K–$225K base plus equity, SF, Singapore, Sydney
Deployed Engineer, Federal (posted)$180K–$280K base plus equity and bonus, Washington DC

Cognition posts ranges on only some ads, read on 23 September 2026: applied AI engineers at $180K to $225K base plus equity, and federal deployed engineers at $180K to $280K base plus equity and a bonus. The software engineer ad has no range. Levels.fyi's 'Cognition' pages mix in other companies with the same name, so they are not used here. Equity is the large part of the package at a company valued at $26B in May 2026. Calibrd benchmarks the pay on any posting you scan against its level and location.

06

How to prepare for a Cognition interview

In order
  1. 01Build a coding agent before the interview: a model calling tools in a loop, running code in a sandbox, reading the output and trying again. Get it working end to end in the first couple of hours, then extend it.
  2. 02Use Devin. The deployed take-home happens inside it, and every loop assumes you know what it does and where it struggles.
  3. 03Deployed engineers: prepare the project presentation so the impact lands in the first five minutes, and rehearse a pitch that ties Devin to delivery speed and cost.
  4. 04Practise a customer call where the customer goes off script. Structure fast, then let it change.
  5. 05Have a real answer on agentic development: what you use, what you built with it, where it broke.

This guide covers Cognition's engineering and deployed engineering loops. Sales, marketing and operations roles run a different process. For management and leadership roles the loop is similar but the bar shifts to people, delivery and strategy, so pair it with the leadership interview prep hub. The bar for your exact role comes from the role-by-role guides, and the prep that actually transfers is spoken, so run a mock interview before the real one.

Knowing the questions isn’t the same as answering them out loud. Run a Cognition mock: spoken answers, coached on the spot. Your first mock is free.

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07

FAQ & sources

The short answers
What is Cognition's interview process?

The deployed engineer loop below comes from Exponent's guide, updated in September 2026 from interviewer and candidate accounts. The build exercise comes from the CEO himself, in August 2025, when core engineering was about 19 people; the team has grown since, so ask your recruiter what the build looks like now. Recruiter screen: Your background, what you want next, and for deployed roles why forward deployed engineering. Deployed candidates are judged here on explaining technical work to someone who is not technical. Build your own Devin: Build an agent that writes and runs code, then show how far it got. Candidates are measured on how far they get, so a working loop early beats a clever design that never runs. Take-home inside Devin: Set up Devin and run a realistic workflow in it. Exponent's guide says it is not a traditional coding challenge and involves very little code: it tests whether you understand the product the way a customer will need to. Project presentation: A past project, told for people outside your field: why it mattered in the first five minutes, then the decisions, what you owned, and how you handle follow-up questions. Leadership one-on-ones: What motivates you, a project you owned end to end, and how steady you stay when someone senior pushes back. Executive pitch: Sell Devin in business terms: faster delivery, lower cost, more ambitious work. Features only count when they connect to an outcome. Customer case call: Structure an unfamiliar customer problem quickly, then adapt when the customer's questions do not follow your plan.

What does Cognition look for in candidates?

The ads for every engineering role list the same things, and the deployed engineer loop is built to test them in front of a customer. Customer empathy: how engineers actually work and what helps them Ownership of the outcome a customer sees Technical curiosity about unfamiliar systems A bias toward execution, from problem to working solution quickly Fluency with agents: how you use them, and how you would build one

What questions does Cognition ask in interviews?

These are the questions reported on Exponent for Cognition, most of them for deployed engineers. The engineering ones are recent and few, which matches a loop built around one long exercise. Why forward deployed engineering? Walk me through a technical feature you led. How much are you owning on a deployment? Present a past technical project to a non-technical audience. How would you rank yourself in terms of percentile? Tell me about yourself. Build an agent The Devin API Agentic development Your product's architecture Deployment and integration

How do I prepare for a Cognition interview?

Build a coding agent before the interview: a model calling tools in a loop, running code in a sandbox, reading the output and trying again. Get it working end to end in the first couple of hours, then extend it. Use Devin. The deployed take-home happens inside it, and every loop assumes you know what it does and where it struggles. Deployed engineers: prepare the project presentation so the impact lands in the first five minutes, and rehearse a pitch that ties Devin to delivery speed and cost. Practise a customer call where the customer goes off script. Structure fast, then let it change. Have a real answer on agentic development: what you use, what you built with it, where it broke.

Interview processes change. This reflects widely-reported and sourced conditions as of 2026 — confirm specifics with your recruiter, and treat it as a map rather than a guarantee.

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