Deep security engineering: Hands-on experience across product security, infrastructure security, and detection and response
Strong software engineering fundamentals: Security at Cognition means writing real code; proficiency in Python, Rust, Go, and comfort owning complex systems codebases
Cloud security expertise: Practical experience securing Kubernetes, cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure), and multi-tenant compute environments
Web security expertise: Hands-on experience hardening complex, modern web applications
Threat modeling and adversarial thinking: You can look at a system and quickly identify how it breaks; you think like an attacker and design like a defender
Incident response: Calm, methodical, and effective under pressure; experience leading incidents end to end and driving the fixes that follow
Comfort with novel problem spaces: You are excited rather than intimidated by the security challenges unique to autonomous agents and AI-native developer tools
Relevant industry experience: Prior experience at a frontier AI lab, applied AI company, or developer tools company. You know what good looks like in this category
Degree from a top-tier university: BS, MS, or equivalent in Computer Science, Mathematics, Engineering, or a related technical discipline from a highly selective program