Past Founder

About the role

We're hiring a Past Founder to own high-impact work across Cogent. You've built a venture-backed company before. You've raised capital, shipped product, hired a team, and made hard calls without a playbook. We want that operating experience applied to what we're building: autonomous AI agents that secure enterprise environments. This role is scoped to your strengths. Whether your background leans product, engineering, GTM, or operations, you'll own a workstream end-to-end and work directly with our founding team.

Responsibilities

• Own critical initiatives end-to-end - a new product area, a customer segment, or a go-to-market motion - and drive it from idea through execution
• Work directly with our founding team to identify the highest-priority problems and decide how we solve them
• Build the systems that let Cogent scale: processes, playbooks, and operational infrastructure that make the next phase of growth possible
• Spend time with enterprise customers and their security teams, and bring those insights into how we build and position our product
• Hire and develop a team around your workstream as the scope grows

Requirements

• Founded or co-founded a venture-backed startup and operated through the early stages - building product, hiring your first team, managing a board, and making high-stakes decisions with incomplete information.
• You know what it means to build a company on venture timelines.
• Alumni of a top accelerator like Y Combinator, Techstars, or a similar program - with the operating tempo and network that comes from it.
• Comfortable operating in ambiguity and taking ownership without direction.
• You've run a company before, and you want to bring that intensity to a team that's scaling with Fortune 500 customers depending on our product.

Skills

• Founded or co-founded an AI-native company in cybersecurity or an adjacent domain: security infrastructure, compliance automation, cloud security, threat intelligence, or enterprise risk
• Direct experience raising venture capital and navigating the fundraising lifecycle
• Experience selling into or building for enterprise security teams
• Background in product, engineering, or go-to-market at a high-growth startup beyond your own company
• Familiarity with vulnerability management, SIEM, SOAR, or adjacent security tooling
• You've scaled a team past the first few hires and built the processes to support that growth

Benefits

Certain roles may be eligible for variable compensation, equity, and benefits.

Pay

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.