Rust Jobs for Rustaceans

About Cognisos
Cognisos is a research lab that builds and ships products at the frontier of language model optimization through deep technology infrastructure. We move fast, think rigorously, and care deeply about the quality of what we put into the world.

About the Role
Cognisos is looking for a Founding Engineer to help build and scale our core technology from MVP to production. This is a foundational role — you'll work directly with the two co-founders to shape both the technical architecture and the culture of the engineering team. The role is remote, with occasional in-person collaboration in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Requirements:

• Proficiency in Rust or C++, with a strong preference for systems-level programming experience
• Deep understanding of relational databases and practical experience designing schemas, writing performant queries, and managing production data at scale
• Experience building and scaling distributed systems or cloud infrastructure
• Working knowledge of LLMs, inference pipelines, and vector storage or graph-based retrieval systems
• A continuous improvement mindset — you're always looking to learn, refactor, and optimize

Who You Are

• You've worked with or alongside AI agents in real-world contexts and understand their capabilities and limitations
• You hold high standards and aren't afraid to push back on the founders when something can be done better — we want a collaborative builder, not just an executor
• You bring an entrepreneurial orientation: you're comfortable with ambiguity, motivated by ownership, and energized by working at the edge of what's technically possible
• You gravitate toward precision, deterministic systems, and well-reasoned decisions

Nice to Have

• Familiarity with Neo4j or Mintlify
• Experience with Bazel, Nix, or WebAssembly

Role is based in San Francisco Bay Area and includes base salary, equity and benefits (healthcare/dental)