# Alexander Baker

Delta Engineer at Cognition (Devin/Windsurf); ex-Windsurf Deployed Engineer, ex-C3 AI Solutions Engineer  
Cognition  
San Francisco, California, United States

## At Cognition

- Role: Delta Engineer (Engineering)
- Joined: Dec 2024
- How they joined: With Windsurf (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/acquisitions/windsurf)
- Before Windsurf: Solutions Engineer, C3 AI
- Overlapped before Cognition with other Cognition people at: Codeium (Windsurf); University of Southern California (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/worked-together)

## Identity
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-baker-674028188
- GitHub: https://github.com/alex-baker-j
- Domain: cognition.ai

## Notes
- Cognition announced a definitive agreement to acquire Windsurf on 2025-07-14, including the Windsurf IDE, IP and brand, $82M ARR and 350+ enterprise customers; Baker's Cognition start date of Jul 2025 lines up with that deal, which is how he went from Windsurf to Cognition. (https://cognition.ai/blog/windsurf)
- Joined Windsurf (formerly Codeium) as a Deployed Engineer in Dec 2024, about seven months before Cognition acquired Windsurf in July 2025; his Cognition 'Delta Engineer' tenure starts Jul 2025. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-baker-674028188)
- Windsurf's official LinkedIn named him as one of two presenting engineers ('Our engineers Alexander Baker and Abhay A.') for the 'What's New in Codeium' live enterprise demo on 2025-02-19, covering Windsurf editor updates, Autogenerated Memories, Web Search, Image Upload, Devcontainer improvements and Cascade Memories. He was presenting product to customers within about two months of joining. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/windsurf_webinar-whats-new-in-codeium-luma-activity-7297701459926597633-P8Rb)
- Cognition describes its Delta Engineer role as 'Embedded with customers on their most critical initiatives', diagnosing complex problems, designing solutions and driving adoption of the Cognition platform (Devin, Windsurf) from inside the customer. (https://www.blackflag.vc/position/delta-engineer)
- Spent 3 years 8 months (May 2021-Dec 2024) as a Solutions Engineer at C3 AI in a client-facing full-stack role building custom ML applications for enterprises, which is the direct precursor to the customer-embedded Deployed/Delta Engineer roles at Windsurf and Cognition. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-baker-674028188)
- His LinkedIn headline still says 'Deployed Engineer at Cognition' while the current position is listed as 'Delta Engineer'. His Windsurf role also stays open until Nov 2025, overlapping Cognition from Jul 2025. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-baker-674028188)
- His EE451 (USC parallel and distributed computation) final project repo was co-developed with teammate Nathan Frank (GitHub nathanjf), whose merged pull request from an Overleaf report branch is the latest commit, dated 2021-03-24. (https://github.com/alex-baker-j/ee451-final-project)
- At USC Viterbi he was a Course Producer for the Operating Systems class (Aug 2020-May 2021), writing C assignments on multi-threading, a multi-level feedback queue scheduler and file-size limits, and mentoring students three days a week. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-baker-674028188)
- Worked as a technical writer for USC Viterbi (Jan-Jun 2020), interviewing researchers at USC, Purdue and Children's Hospital Los Angeles; pieces included AI systems reacting to novelty and ML for disease markers. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-baker-674028188)
- GitHub account alex-baker-j (created 2017-08, 11 public repos) is his: it hosts Technical_Writing_Portfolio, described as articles published by USC Viterbi, matching his LinkedIn note that his Viterbi articles are 'available on my Github'. (https://github.com/alex-baker-j)
- Wrote 'Want to Teach An AI Novelty? First, Teach It Monopoly. Then Throw Out the Rules.' for USC Viterbi (July 2020), covering research on making AI adaptable to novel rules. (https://viterbischool.usc.edu/news/2020/07/want-to-teach-an-ai-novelty-first-teach-it-monopoly-then-throw-out-the-rules/)
- Summer 2020 internship at Crowe as a Data Analytics - Financial Services Consultant: built an R data-quality tool for 1M+ row datasets that was presented in an internal innovation showcase, and did regression-based customer risk analysis for a bank. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-baker-674028188)
- Bylined USC Viterbi article 'Your Social Media Feed is biased' (April 2020), listed in his Technical_Writing_Portfolio repo. (https://viterbischool.usc.edu/news/2020/04/your-social-media-feed-is-biased/)
- Wrote the USC ISI story on ISI and Children's Hospital Los Angeles researchers using machine learning to find markers of a rare genetic disorder, his earliest public writing on applied ML. (https://www.isi.edu/news/story/407)
- Taught C++ summer camps as an iD Tech instructor on the Stanford campus (2019-2020), covering OOP, data structures and algorithm design, with students building SFML games, mirroring his own C++ game repos from 2019. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-baker-674028188)

## Experience
- Delta Engineer at Cognition - San Francisco Bay Area (Jul 2025 - Present)
- Deployed Engineer at Windsurf - San Francisco Bay Area (Dec 2024 - Nov 2025)
- Solutions Engineer at C3 AI - Redwood City, California, United States (May 2021 - Dec 2024): Client-facing, full-stack role. Designing and implementing custom ML applications for the Enterprise.
- Course Producer for Operating Systems Class at USC Viterbi School of Engineering - Los Angeles Metropolitan Area (Aug 2020 - May 2021): •	Create, manage, and grade programming assignments related to operating systems (using C).
•	Teach topics such as implementing multi-threading, implementing a multi-level feedback queue scheduler, and increasing an OS’s maximum file size. 
•	Mentor students 3 days a week to help with programming assignments and course material.
- Data Analytics - Financial Services Consultant at Crowe - Los Angeles, California, United States (Jun 2020 - Jul 2020): •	Designed and built a data quality assessment tool using R to facilitate error checking on large data sets (> 1 million entries). 
•	Converted the tool into a finished version including documentation. The tool was presented in an innovation showcase within Crowe. 
•	Performed data analysis for a bank (> $500 million revenue), applied linear regression techniques to establish methods of customer risk analysis.
- Technical Writer at USC Viterbi School of Engineering - Los Angeles, California, United States (Jan 2020 - Jun 2020): •	Interviewed and collaborated with researchers at USC, Purdue, and the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles regarding engineering advancements. 
•	Wrote articles published to the USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s website and magazine. 
•	Making AI more adaptable - teaching AI systems to react to novelty (Article Available on my Github). 
•	Using machine learning to find markers of disease (Article available on my Github).
- Instructor at IDtech - Stanford (May 2019 - Jun 2020): •	Acted as the primary instructor for summer camp courses in C++ on the Stanford campus. 
•	Created and carried out lesson plans on topics such as object-oriented design, data structures, and algorithm design.
•	Lead students in the creation of final projects: games built using C++ and the SFML graphics library.

## Education
- University of Southern California - Bachelor's degree, Computer Science and Computer Engineering - (Jan 2017 - Jan 2021)

## Sources
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-baker-674028188
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/windsurf_webinar-whats-new-in-codeium-luma-activity-7297701459926597633-P8Rb
- https://cognition.ai/blog/windsurf
- https://www.blackflag.vc/position/delta-engineer
- https://api.github.com/users/alex-baker-j
- https://api.github.com/users/alex-baker-j/repos?per_page=100
- https://github.com/alex-baker-j/ee451-final-project
- https://github.com/alex-baker-j/Technical_Writing_Portfolio
- https://github.com/alex-baker-j
- https://github.com/alex-baker-j?tab=repositories
- https://viterbischool.usc.edu/news/2020/07/want-to-teach-an-ai-novelty-first-teach-it-monopoly-then-throw-out-the-rules/
- https://viterbischool.usc.edu/news/2020/04/your-social-media-feed-is-biased/
- https://www.isi.edu/news/story/407


Researched with Autumn (https://www.autumn.ai) from public sources. Updated 2026-11-04. Profile: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people/alexander-baker · Everyone at Cognition: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people