Commercial Counsel at Cognition (New York, NY)
Cognition· New York, NY·
Role details
Cognition at a glance
Applied AI lab behind Devin, the autonomous AI software engineer, and the Windsurf IDE.
Cognition is an applied AI lab building autonomous software engineering agents. Its flagship, Devin, plans, writes, tests, and ships production code inside a customer's own codebase and tooling. After acquiring Windsurf in 2025, it also runs the Windsurf AI-native IDE as a synchronous complement to Devin's async agent work.
$1.5B+ raised · latest: Series D · $1B+ · $26B valuation · May 2026 · backed by Lux Capital, General Catalyst, 8VC, Founders Fund
Summary
The Commercial Counsel manages a high-volume workflow of complex negotiations for AI SaaS licensing, marketing, and partnership agreements. This role involves drafting and negotiating commercial contracts, providing legal guidance to non-legal stakeholders, and ensuring fair and commercially sound closures while bal...
Job description
We are an applied AI lab building end-to-end software agents. We're the makers of Devin, the first AI software engineer. Our team is extremely 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 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 Role
As Commercial Counsel for US, you will sit at the centre of a fast-moving commercial legal function, managing a high-volume workflow of complex negotiations across AI SaaS licensing, marketing, and partnership agreements. You will work with enterprise-level deals, balancing risk and reward with pragmatism and speed, and ensuring closures that are both fair and commercially sound. This role carries real weight. You will serve as the connective tissue between the GTM team and technical and operational teams, translating contractual commitments into guidance that non-legal stakeholders can act on. Beyond day-to-day deal work, you will play a meaningful part in the company's growth, working cross-functionally to establish and grow contract compliance mechanisms. If you want a legal role with genuine strategic scope, this is it.
In this role you will:
- Focus on Enterprise (US) deals and contract work
- Manage a high-volume workflow, redlining and negotiating key legal documents, including Licensing, SaaS agreements, and NDAs
- Provide crucial legal guidance, balancing risk/reward, with an understanding of national and international requirements and parlaying that to the technical and operational team
- Engage with enterprise-level counsel, ensuring swift and fair deal closures
Ideally you have:
- 7+ years experience drafting and negotiating commercial contracts
- Experience with high-velocity, high-growth tech company preferred
- Diverse body of work, including inbound and outbound contracts
Our Commitment Equal Opportunity. Cognition is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of any protected characteristic under applicable law. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities throughout the hiring process - please let us know if you need any. Cognition also considers applicants with criminal histories consistent with the SF Fair Chance Ordinance and similar local laws. Data Privacy and Arbitration: By submitting your application, you agree to our Global Applicant and Job Candidate Privacy Notice. For US applicants, by submitting your application, you agree to the Applicant Arbitration Agreement.
Why work at Cognition
- Culture: “Talent-dense,” interdisciplinary, low-ego, and urgency-driven. The team works on “the hardest problems in AI” and values shipping real impact.
- Work model: Hybrid/office-first with major hubs in San Francisco, New York, Austin, London, Singapore, Tokyo, and others. Many roles list specific locations, suggesting in-office presence is expected.
- Benefits: Comprehensive medical, dental, vision insurance; unlimited PTO; meals in primary offices; wellness stipend; commuter benefits; 401(k); HSA/FSA; fertility and family building support.
- Engineering culture: Strong emphasis on applied AI, customer proximity (“we work alongside our customers”), and building infrastructure that redefines software engineering.