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.

What You'll Do

• 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

What We're Looking for

• 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.

Nice to Have

• 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

Pay and benefits

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.