Founding Country Leader - Japan

We are an applied AI lab building end-to-end software agents.We're the makers of Devin, the first AI software engineer, and Windsurf, the AI-native IDE. Together, they represent our vision for collaborative AI teammates that enable engineers to focus on more interesting problems and empower teams to strive for more ambitious goals.Our team is small and 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 and Windsurf 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 RoleCountry Leader, Tokyo, JapanAs we expand into Asia, Cognition is looking for a founding Country Leader to launch and scale our operations in Japan. This role is for an experienced executive who can build the full Japanese business from scratch. You will lead go-to-market, establish commercial and government partnerships, hire cross-functional teams, build and scale a direct and partnerships team, with the necessary supporting functions and drive Cognition's footprint across the region.You will be our senior-most leader on the ground in Japan, responsible for setting the strategy, driving revenue, managing the local P and L, and ensuring exceptional customer experience. The ideal candidate combines enterprise sales experience with operational leadership, and has built or scaled high-growth technology organisations in Japan.What you’ll doLaunch and scale Cognition’s Japan operations as our first senior hire in marketOwn country-level P and L, hiring, sales execution, and operational performanceBuild and lead a high-performing local team across sales, customer success, engineering, support, and operationsLead strategic partnerships with Japanese enterprises and government agenciesDrive sales cycles end-to-end and close deals directly and via partneras with key enterprise customersPartner with our global leadership team to align product-market fit for JapanRepresent Cognition externally in Japan’s business and technology ecosystemBuild scalable internal processes for customer onboarding, implementation, and successProvide feedback to Product and Engineering on localisation and feature needsWhat you’ll bring10+ years of leadership experience in Japan, ideally at fast-growing software or AI companiesProven experience launching and scaling operations in new marketsDeep relationships and understanding of Japan’s enterprise and government sectorsStrong enterprise sales, partnerships and GTM experience with a track record of closing complex dealsA blend of strategic thinking and hands-on executionFluency in Japanese and EnglishExperience building cross-functional teams from the ground up with world class talentPassion for technology, innovation, and shaping the future of workNice to haveExperience in AI, developer tools, or enterprise SaaSBackground in engineering or product-led companiesExposure to high-growth US or global companies expanding into Asia