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Capture Lead - Federal

Cognition· Sales
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Hybrid (Washington DC)Full-timePosted 3mo ago

About the role

We are an applied AI lab building end-to-end software agents. Cognition is building its federal business and seeks a Capture Lead to own the capture engine end to end—from identifying pursuits to building repeatable systems.

Responsibilities

  • Capture strategy & planning: Partner with Federal sales leadership on quarterly and annual capture planning; Partner with GTM, Mission Success, and Engineering on deal structuring, pricing strategy, and negotiation across contract vehicles; Track and prioritize contract vehicle strategy (GSA, OTAs, IDIQs, SBIR pathways, prime/sub relationships)
  • Pursuit & proposal operations: Identify and track relevant federal solicitations, from initial RFI through final RFP; Build the operational backbone for proposal response: intake, qualification, bid/no-bid decisioning, color team review cadence, and compliance; Manage relationships with proposal and capture partners supporting RFI-to-RFP response on Cognition's behalf; Build and maintain proposal collateral, and maintain the past performance, capabilities, and pricing libraries that compound across pursuits
  • GTM systems & performance: Define the metrics that matter for a federal GTM motion and build dashboards that surface them; Own solicitation response tracking across active pursuits; Run the red-team/AAR process on wins and losses; turn lessons learned into repeatable best practices
  • Cross-functional execution: Identify operational bottlenecks and build the systems, processes, and tooling to remove them

Qualifications

  • 4+ years of experience in federal business operations, capture management, or revenue strategy at a defense tech, federal SaaS, or government services company
  • Deep fluency in federal procurement: contract vehicles, working knowledge of FAR/DFARS, capture lifecycle, and the rhythm of federal sales cycles
  • Strong analytical foundation—you can build the model, run the analysis, and tell the story
  • Track record of working in and building capture programs from scratch in a fast-moving environment
  • Comfort operating without a playbook, and a low ego about doing the work yourself
  • Based in Washington, DC, or willing to relocate
  • Security clearance preferred, or ability to obtain one

Skills

Required:Federal procurement knowledgeCapture program developmentAnalytical storytelling

Benefits

  • Not specified in the description
Last updated Oct 21, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
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About Cognition

cognition is an applied AI lab

An applied AI lab building the future of software engineering. We’re the makers of Devin, a collaborative AI teammate that helps ambitious engineering teams achieve more.

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