freehire launches on Product Hunt on 26 August.

Follow →

Operations Generalist

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. We partner with Fortune 500 companies to secure some of the most complex production environments in the world.

We’re backed by Greylock & Bain Capital Ventures, 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

We're hiring an Operations Associate to own the day-to-day operations that keep Cogent running - ranging across people operations, workplace operations, events, and special projects. You'll work across the business rather than sitting inside one function. This role offers rare exposure to how a category-defining company is built end to end, making it a strong fit for someone excited by company-building and long-term leadership growth.

What You'll Do

  • Workplace Operations: Own office logistics across both locations in San Francisco and New York, from supplies and landlord relationships, to running company swag from concept to delivery, to planning off-sites.

  • People Operations: Own recruiting coordination and onboarding end to end, from scheduling and offer logistics to designing how new hires ramp. You'll also handle legal and immigration coordination and run the Cogent Founder Academy.

  • Events: Dream up events that build the Cogent brand and own them end to end - concept, logistics, & invites, while building a recurring events calendar and cadence for the company.

  • Special Projects: Partner directly with the founders and the Head of Bizops to tackle other strategic initiatives that come up.

What We're Looking For

  • 2+ years of experience working in a fast-paced environment, ideally at a startup (open to less if you're high-slope and quick to pick things up)

  • Background in an ambiguous, cross-functional role - people operations, workplace operations, office management, or events management

  • A self-starter who can unblock themselves and drive work without heavy direction

  • Good taste and a point of view on what makes an office, an offsite, or an onboarding experience actually good, not just checked off a list

  • Comfortable owning work across very different domains without dropping details

  • Energized by a fast-moving, high-intensity environment rather than drained by it

  • Reaches for AI tools as a default way of working (e.g., building a script or an automation to solve a problem instead of doing it by hand every time)

  • Strong written communication: clear, simple, and calibrated to the audience

  • Experience handling sensitive employee information with accuracy and discretion

Bonus Points

  • Strong undergraduate degree with consulting experience

  • Experience having founded your own venture or built a function from 0-1

What this application asks

ashby

Legal Name, Email, Resume, Where are you based from today?

  • Preferred Name (if applicable) optional
  • Phone Number
  • Linkedin Profile (write N/A if you don't have one)
  • Engineering primarily works in office (4 days/week) from our San Francisco, CA & New York, NY offices. Are you excited to work in person? choose any
  • Do you currently, or will you in the future, need visa sponsorship to work in the United States (e.g. H-1B)? yes / no
  • Why Cogent? written answer
  • While Cogent doesn't have set working hours, as a Series A startup in an increasingly competitive field, nights and weekend hours are not uncommon. Are you ready for or excited to work in this type of environment? 
  • Tell us about a project that you're especially proud of. written answer · optional
  • Anything else you want to share? written answer · optional

See also

Tailor your CV for this role?

We couldn't check your fit for this role — add a CV to your profile to see it next time.

A new version of freehire is available