--- title: 'Software Engineer - Backend at Cogent Security' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-backend-cogent-security-san-francisco-9rvprb20x6x0' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-07' --- # Software Engineer - Backend at Cogent Security - **Company:** Cogent Security - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** hybrid - **Posted:** 2026-08-14 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-07 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/cogent-security/8ed91823-a59b-469a-a6ed-51d33c34ddb9 ## Job description ## ABOUT COGENT Cogent is an Applied AI Lab building the next generation of AI agents for cybersecurity. AI has fundamentally changed how attacks happen, allowing malicious actors to operate at unprecedented speed and scale. Cogent’s "AI Taskforce" assesses petabytes of enterprise data to remediate these issues before critical breaches occur. To stay at the cutting edge, we blend frontier research with real-world execution. Alongside our core product work, Cogent Research serves as our applied AI lab, providing the research horsepower needed to make truly agentic security workflows a reality. Since coming out of stealth, Cogent has experienced rapid growth. We partner with Fortune 500 companies to secure some of the most complex production environments in the world. We’re backed by Greylock and we’ve built a team with the best minds in applied AI. Our team is comprised of people from: - Top universities like Stanford, Berkeley, Penn, Duke, Carnegie Mellon, Waterloo - Unicorn, high-growth companies like Scale AI, Databricks, Stripe, Tesla, Coinbase - World class cybersecurity experts from Wiz, Abnormal AI, Zscaler - Preeminent research labs like Deepmind and SAIL ## ABOUT THE ROLE As we work with our first design partners, Cogent is building a suite of backend services and integrations that will power our autonomous AI workers. We are looking for talented, ambitious Backend Senior and Staff Engineers who are excited to build in the Applied AI space. ## WHAT YOU’LL DO & ACHIEVE - Design and implement key backend, integration platform subsystems - Understand business goals, product and technology strategies and customer requirements and implement supporting backend and integration platform subsystems to achieve them - Adapt and evolve systems and plans to implement newly identified design partner and customer requirements - Adapt and evolve systems to implement non-functional requirements (compliance, security, enterprise integration etc.) - Laying down infrastructure foundations for growth and scalability - Prepare Cogent for future headcount, customer, and data growth by working with a team to design and build an infrastructure that will scale and that achieves requirements in the areas of product capabilities, non-functional needs (reliability, security, disaster recovery, etc.). - Help create a robust engineering culture at Cogent - Onboard, support and uplevel future team members - Participate in, provide feedback on, and iterate interview process as we scale the team up - Actively contribute to Engineering Excellence, Operational Excellence and Recruiting initiatives ## WHAT YOU’LL BRING - 5+ years of professional experience as a hands-on engineer and technical leader, overseeing and contributing to multiple backend systems and infrastructure projects - Expertise in architecting, developing, and scaling backend systems, including both stateless and stateful architectures, to support high-performance, enterprise-level applications - Proven experience with distributed systems, microservices, and serverless architectures, ensuring robustness, scalability, and fault tolerance - Strong knowledge of backend programming languages such as Python, Go or similar, with a deep understanding of concurrency, memory management, and performance optimization - Experience with API design and implementation (RESTful and/or gRPC), integrating with frontend systems, data platforms, and third-party services - Solid experience with containerization, orchestration, and deployment technologies like Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, and CI/CD pipelines in multi-cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure) ## FOR CALIFORNIA BASED APPLICANTS The standard base salary range for this position is $100,000 - $300,000 annually. Compensation offered will be determined by factors such as location, job level, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Certain roles may be eligible for variable compensation, equity, and benefits. We are committed to building an inclusive and diverse company. We do not discriminate based on gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, civil or family status, age, disability, or race. ## About Cogent Security ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Cogent Security is an applied AI lab building autonomous AI agents that discover, assess, and remediate enterprise vulnerabilities at machine speed. - **Entity Type**: Private (Seed / Series A; $11M total funding) - **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States - **Founded**: 2024 - **Founders**: Vineet Edupuganti (CEO), Geng Sng (CTO), Thanos Baskous (VP Engineering) [cogent.com/about-us](https://www.cogent.com/about-us) ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: Cybersecurity – specifically vulnerability management and agentic AI for security remediation. - **Target customers**: Enterprise cybersecurity teams (B2B, mid-market to large enterprises). - **Mission**: “Prevent breaches using autonomous AI systems that continuously secure systems against AI-armed adversaries operating at machine speed.” [cogent.com](https://www.cogent.com/) ## Products & Services - **[Cogent Platform]**: An AI-agent workforce that handles the full vulnerability lifecycle. Modules include **Discover** (identify vulnerable software within minutes of a disclosure), **Assess** (risk scoring based on business context), **Remediate** (from assisted to fully autonomous fix deployment), and **Report** (verified evidence-backed reporting). Type: SaaS platform with embedded AI agents. [cogent.com](https://www.cogent.com/) ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private company). - **Key Metric**: Total funding $11M – Seed round ($11M) led by Greylock Partners (August 2025); subsequent Series A led by Bain Capital Ventures with additional investors. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/cogentsecurity) - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Greylock Partners, Bain Capital Ventures. Customers include Alteryx (CISO Lucas Moody), CSC Generation (CEO Justin Yoshimura), University of the Pacific (CISO Mo Bal). [cogent.com/about-us](https://www.cogent.com/about-us) - **Growth Signals**: 39 employees (as of mid-2025), +14% monthly headcount growth, 29 active job postings, reported 3x increase in vulnerability team output and 97% reduction in exposure window for critical vulnerabilities. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/cogentsecurity) ## Competitive Advantages - **Agentic AI approach** that not only detects but also investigates, coordinates, and verifies fixes – reducing the manual burden on security teams. - **Founding team** from Google DeepMind, Abnormal Security, and Coinbase, bringing deep AI and security expertise. - **Rapid time-to-value**: 3 hours from onboarding to full vulnerability assessment. - **Strong customer satisfaction**: 4.9/5 rating from 1,200+ reviews. [cogent.com/about-us](https://www.cogent.com/about-us) ## Strategic Focus - Scaling AI agent capabilities to cover more vulnerability types and integrate deeper into enterprise workflows. - Expanding the commercial team (Sales, Solutions Engineering, TAMs) to capture growing demand. - Advancing research through **Cogent Research**, tackling open problems in dependable autonomy and AI × security. [cogent.com](https://www.cogent.com/) ## Why Work Here - **Culture**: Values include customer centricity, intentionality, ambition for excellence, extreme ownership, velocity, and intellectual honesty. [cogent.com/company/careers](https://www.cogent.com/company/careers) - **Remote/Hybrid**: In-person in San Francisco and New York, plus remote options within the US. [cogent.com/company/careers](https://www.cogent.com/company/careers) - **Engineering Culture**: Engineers and AI researchers sit together; the distance from idea to production is measured in days. Emphasis on shipping production software, not just research. - **Notable Perks**: 12-week AI Fellowship for graduate researchers and early-career ML engineers; team hails from top companies like Coinbase, Databricks, AWS, Zscaler, and HashiCorp. [cogent.com/company/careers](https://www.cogent.com/company/careers) - **Growth Opportunity**: Rapidly scaling startup with significant funding, strong customer traction, and a mission-driven focus on one of cybersecurity’s hardest problems. ## Sources 1. [cogent.com](https://www.cogent.com/) – Company overview, product details, customer testimonials 2. [cogent.com/about-us](https://www.cogent.com/about-us) – Founders, mission, team background 3. [cogent.com/company/careers](https://www.cogent.com/company/careers) – Culture, remote policy, AI Fellowship, values 4. [linkedin.com/company/cogentsecurity](https://www.linkedin.com/company/cogentsecurity) – Employee count, funding, office locations, job postings 5. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/cogent-security](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/cogent-security) – Active job openings 6. Pulse 2.0 (2025-07-16) – “Cogent Security: $11 Million Raised For AI Taskforce For Vulnerability Management” 7. FinSMEs (2025-07-15) – “Cogent Security Raises $11M in Funding” ## Other roles at Cogent Security - [Accounting Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/accounting-manager-cogent-security-new-york-ay01k1ga3tcs) — New York, NY - [Senior Analyst, Strategic Finance](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-analyst-strategic-finance-cogent-security-new-york-mb5f34ya6e4r) — New York, NY - [Security Engineer - Application Security (Senior)](https://feeny.ai/job/security-engineer-application-security-senior-cogent-security-united-states-dxg7ychqd220) — United States - [Forward Deployed Agent Engineer, Early Career](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-agent-engineer-early-career-cogent-security-new-york-88hfwcpessv5) — New York, NY - [Business Operations & Strategy](https://feeny.ai/job/business-operations-strategy-cogent-security-san-francisco-3h7bbry68jbz) — San Francisco, CA - [Field Marketing Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/field-marketing-manager-cogent-security-new-york-ewvnsjqjscem) — New York, NY - [Sales Operations Analyst](https://feeny.ai/job/sales-operations-analyst-cogent-security-new-york-zrnwqz6hcqkb) — New York, NY - [Head of Demand Generation](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-demand-generation-cogent-security-new-york-5e9gf3wx4t76) — New York, NY - [Forward Deployed Agent Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-agent-engineer-cogent-security-san-francisco-sf1qn8adzzv2) — San Francisco, CA - [Security Engineer - Corporate Security (Senior)](https://feeny.ai/job/security-engineer-corporate-security-senior-cogent-security-united-states-ntvztmdx29vv) — United States