Asmar Ghafoor
“Building International GTM @ Cognition.ai”
- Joined
- Nov 2025
- How they joined
- Directly
- Before Cognition
- RewaaGlobal Vice President of Talent and HR
- Status
- Current
“Over the last 6 months at Cognition , I’ve had a front row seat to one of the fastest scaling technology companies I’ve seen in my career. … But this feels fundamentally different and I’ve had to unlearn a lot and what I thought was ‘great’ and push the boundaries of my thinking.”
- Joined Cognition in November 2025, announcing on LinkedIn he would be 'Head of Talent and People Operations - EMEA and JAPAC', partnering with Brooke Arthur, Managing Director of International (ex-Scale AI and Sama).Nov 11, 2025I am very excited to share that I’ll be joining Cognition as Head of Talent and People Operations - EMEA and JAPAC! Cognition is redefining software engineering through applied AI, led by our flagship product, Devin! The world’s first fully autonomous, Enterprise-class AI software engineer! (cognition.ai) For me, this next chapter is about building at the edge of what's possible, combining my global experience working with the best talent on the planet! We are scaling all markets with precision! Across International, I will be partnering closely with Brooke Arthur, our Managing Director of International. Brooke is an amazing and inspirational leader with an insane track record in Enterprise AI, having previously built and led world-class GTM teams at ScaleAI and Sama. My focus: – Partnering with leadership across the globe, hiring the very best to enable huge value for our customers, as they adopt and integrate Devin into their Engineering teams as a full team member! – Building a scalable, high-performance talent engine – Enabling world-class onboarding and GTM readiness Hiring: We are scaling KSA, UAE, Singapore, and Japan as a start, and I will be speaking in the coming days and weeks about what we are looking for. As everyone knows, I am located in Riyadh, and we have some amazing announcements coming to support the gargantuan digital growth and AI initiatives coming from the Kingdom! 😉 Huge thanks to the leadership team and people who supported me through the process Emily Cohen Patrick Circelli Alex Hammett Russell Kaplan. #CognitionAI #GTM #Saudivision2030 #AI #Devin #Vision2030 #KSA #UAE #Japan #Singapore #CIO #CTO
- LinkedIn role description says he joined as 'one of Cognition's first international hires' to lead 0-to-1 expansion across Singapore, Japan, Australia, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, hiring 40+ leaders and GTM staff across Sales, Deployed Engineering and Applied AI.Nov 2025
- Says Patrick Circelli, 'Cognition's first true Talent hire', hired him and Hayley Hibbens, making the talent team 'a small and mighty group of three' at the time he joined.Jul 17, 2026As Cognition has scaled beyond North America over the last year into a truly global company, we’ve built a Talent team spread across multiple continents. Yesterday was our first Talent team lunch together in SF and for many of us, the first time meeting in person! 😁 Patrick Circelli was Cognition’s first true Talent hire. He subsequently hired me & Hayley Hibbens into the team last year. At the time, as a small and mighty group of three, we were not entirely sure how much recruiting firepower we would need for the journey ahead. Along the way, we brought together an exceptional group of people with different backgrounds, perspectives and unique superpowers. Emily Cohen, our fearless leader, has built and empowered a team defined by high agency, ownership and an enormous sense of purpose. This year has been transformative at Cognition and has rocked so far! 🚀 The high standards run through Cognition to our core, it’s what sets us apart to ensure we can make our customers successful. We hire people who move quickly, think independently, take ownership and raise the bar around them. We are not trying to build the biggest team, but one of the most talent-dense companies in the world. Following our Series D funding round, we are hiring globally across all teams, while remaining uncompromising on quality! We are looking for the top 0.1% in their respective fields. There is still an enormous amount to build and a genuine opportunity to help create a generational company. 🚀 Nathan Wangliao Hannah Miller-Jones Alexander Dengler Arianna Bautista Abby Becker Ryan Kaabi Russell Kaplan Scott Wu Jeff Wang #CognitionAI #Devin #Hiring #TalentDensity #dreamteam
- Six-month post: Cognition raised $1B at ~$25B with run-rate revenue of $490M+, 'Devin is responsible for 89% of the PRs written at Cognition', offices launched in London, Tokyo and Singapore, and the company 'integrated Windsurf into the broader platform vision'. He joined after the Windsurf deal and does not claim to have worked at Windsurf.May 28, 2026Over the last 6 months at Cognition , I’ve had a front row seat to one of the fastest scaling technology companies I’ve seen in my career. This week, we announced our new raise of $1B at a ~$25B valuation, with enterprise usage growing more than 10x since the start of this year and run rate revenue reaching $490M+. However, the numbers only tell part of the story! The transformation that’s happening across technology with Agentic AI is generational. 🚀 We are entering a world of software abundance, where engineers increasingly operate as architects, system thinkers and creative problem solvers, while autonomous agents handle more of the repetitive, time intensive implementation work. A year ago, many people still viewed autonomous AI software engineers as experimental. Today, they are being integrated into real enterprise engineering workflows globally. One stat internally that still blows my mind: Today, ‘Devin is responsible for 89% of the PRs written at Cognition’, that’s real production velocity! 🚀 And what has impressed me most since joining is not just the technology, but the execution culture behind it. In a very short period of time, we have: * scaled globally across EMEA, APAC and the US * launched offices in London, Tokyo and Singapore * dramatically expanded enterprise adoption * continued shipping at exceptional pace * integrated Windsurf into the broader platform vision * and built an incredibly high density global team of operators, builders and engineers I’ve spent most of my career helping scale SaaS and infrastructure companies through hypergrowth, IPO preparation and global expansion. But this feels fundamentally different and I’ve had to unlearn a lot and what I thought was ‘great’ and push the boundaries of my thinking. The talent density, agency and intellectual curiosity across the company is unlike anything I’ve experienced before, which has been huge for us and our customers. Massive credit to Scott Wu, the leadership team and everyone across the company helping shape the future of software engineering. The next decade is going to look very different from the last. And we are only getting started. 😎 Emily Cohen Russell Kaplan Nicholas Erdenberger Alexandra Mysak Richard Spence Takumi Masai Patrick Bresnahan Berry Yirrell Daniel Eduardo Acorda Christian L. Nicole Zuuring Akira Shibata Kevin Lee Yannis Psorakis Calvin Giroud Sandeep Shah Jake Villas Alex Kaplan Nathan Wangliao Patrick Circelli Jeff Wang #Devin #CognitionAI #EnterpriseAI #Hiring
- Credits himself with launching Cognition's Saudi Regional HQ and supporting entity setup and operational launches in the UAE, Japan and Singapore 'in just three months'.Nov 2025
- Says Singapore is Cognition's APAC HQ, led by Richard Spence, with a new shophouse office on Amoy Street. He used the Singapore F1 weekend (Aston Martin Aramco sponsorship) to recruit Enterprise AEs, VPs of Sales, Deployed Engineers and Field CTOs.Oct 11, 2026Singapore, who’s at the F1 today? 🏎️🇸🇬 Heading to the Sky View Suite, with plenty of our Cognition colleagues over in the Paddock too! If you’re an Enterprise AE, VP of Sales, Deployed Engineer, Field CTO or Head of Engineering, let’s meet. We’re building our teams across APJ and I’m looking to meet top talent. Around the suites or Paddock? Drop me a DM and let’s connect! Should be an exciting day! 🚀 Richard Spence Nicole Zuuring #CognitionAI #Devin #SingaporeGP #F1 #AstonMartinAramco
- Early Oct 2026 post lists 'Over $2B in Series E funding at a $48B valuation' and Chris Degnan joining. He was interviewing Majors Account Directors across APAC with Richard Spence that week.Oct 3, 2026“Everything’s in scope.” Including Singapore! 🇸🇬 Just landed from Tokyo and spotted our Devin campaign at Changi. A proud moment seeing the fruits of our labour reach more corners of the world. A brilliant week in Japan, capped off by our engineering event. Huge thanks to our Japan team and everyone who joined us. 🇯🇵 Now a week with Richard Spence, meeting and interviewing leaders and Account Directors for our Majors business across APAC. Plenty to talk about following our recent announcements over the last weeks: 🚀 Over $2B in Series E funding at a $48B valuation 🤝 Chris Degnan joining as CRO after his incredible journey at Snowflake 📱 Devin Mobile in beta for iOS ⚡ Fusion up to 40% cheaper and Devin Review up to 70% cheaper 🔗 Deeper Microsoft integrations and our new MongoDB partnership Behind every announcement is our wonderful team making it happen. We’re looking for more exceptional people to help build what comes next. Singapore, ready to build with us? Let’s grab a coffee this week. 🚀 #Devin #CognitionAI #Singapore #APAC
- Hosted a Tokyo evening for 30+ established engineers and founders, covering Devin, Deployed Engineering and Devin Security Swarm.Oct 1, 2026What a night in Tokyo 🇯🇵 30+ highly established engineers and founders joined us for an evening of Devin, Deployed Engineering and a deep dive into Devin Security Swarm. Amazing people, Incredible venue with views, great food and drinks! Most importantly, some brilliant conversations and new connections. Japan continues to impress me with the depth of engineering talent here. Thank you to everyone who joined us and made the evening such a success! We’ll definitely be doing more of these around the world over the coming months. The question is… where will Devin and friends be travelling to next? 👀🌎 Takumi Masai Akira Shibata, PhD Hiroshi Sakurai Russell Kaplan Scott Wu Emily Cohen #Devin #CognitionAI #Tokyo #AI
- Welcomed Chad Peets to Cognition as 'the Talent Master' from 'my days working with the Bladelogic BMC crew', a working tie that goes back to his 2011-2013 time at BMC Software.Oct 1, 2026
- In his joining post he thanked Emily Cohen, Patrick Circelli, Alex Hammett and Russell Kaplan.Nov 11, 2025I am very excited to share that I’ll be joining Cognition as Head of Talent and People Operations - EMEA and JAPAC! Cognition is redefining software engineering through applied AI, led by our flagship product, Devin! The world’s first fully autonomous, Enterprise-class AI software engineer! (cognition.ai) For me, this next chapter is about building at the edge of what's possible, combining my global experience working with the best talent on the planet! We are scaling all markets with precision! Across International, I will be partnering closely with Brooke Arthur, our Managing Director of International. Brooke is an amazing and inspirational leader with an insane track record in Enterprise AI, having previously built and led world-class GTM teams at ScaleAI and Sama. My focus: – Partnering with leadership across the globe, hiring the very best to enable huge value for our customers, as they adopt and integrate Devin into their Engineering teams as a full team member! – Building a scalable, high-performance talent engine – Enabling world-class onboarding and GTM readiness Hiring: We are scaling KSA, UAE, Singapore, and Japan as a start, and I will be speaking in the coming days and weeks about what we are looking for. As everyone knows, I am located in Riyadh, and we have some amazing announcements coming to support the gargantuan digital growth and AI initiatives coming from the Kingdom! 😉 Huge thanks to the leadership team and people who supported me through the process Emily Cohen Patrick Circelli Alex Hammett Russell Kaplan. #CognitionAI #GTM #Saudivision2030 #AI #Devin #Vision2030 #KSA #UAE #Japan #Singapore #CIO #CTO
- Global VP of Talent and HR at Rewaa (Jan 2024-Aug 2025), Saudi SaaS. He got the job by messaging the CEO on LinkedIn, was interviewed 24 hours later and moved from the UK to Riyadh a week after that. His LinkedIn role says Rewaa grew from $8M to $22M+ ARR over his tenure.Aug 2025After nearly two transformative years, I’ve wrapped up my time at Rewaa. In January 2024, I messaged the CEO on LinkedIn. 24 hours later, I was interviewed, and a week later, I was on the ground in Riyadh, moving from the UK on a gut feeling. My mission? To build winning teams, infrastructure, culture, and leadership capability from the ground up while helping Saudi Arabia’s SaaS and AI ecosystem attract world-class talent, and ultimately contribute to Saudi Vision 2030. What we achieved together was nothing short of amazing, and it all starts with the talent: 🚀 420+ hires (370 in FY24) with 60%+ Saudisation, zero agencies 🚀 World-class onboarding and relo for expats from the US, EMEA, and Asia 🚀 ARR growth: $8M → $24M+ with 14,000+ customers 🚀 Retention +25%, 2x monthly active users 🚀 SSRR: 5% → 75% | AI Resolution: 0 → 50% 🚀 NPS growth: -10 → +35 (+450%) 🚀 Top 10 Fastest Growing Companies in MENA (LinkedIn, 2024) 🚀 Best Places to Work 2024 Now I’m exploring my next leadership role in Riyadh or the GCC, ideally with ambitious founders building globally minded, high-growth companies in the Middle East or beyond. In parallel, I am supporting select companies with executive search and org design, helping founders and investors secure C-level leadership talent and map out what world class looks like in terms of the structure they need to scale. If you’re building something bold and need a people leader with a track record of IPOs, exits, and creating high-performing global teams, let’s talk. I will be using the next 4-6 weeks to iron out my options, and ideally would like to stay in Riyadh, but the world's my Oyster! 😊 #PeopleLeadership #ExecutiveSearch #HRBP #GCC #Startups #SaaS #AI #Vision2030 #Riyadh
- Global GTM Talent Leader at PagerDuty (May 2017-Jan 2020). He was 'the first hire in EMEA', hired by the CRO, and scaled WW Sales and EMEA/APJ GTM teams ahead of the April 2019 IPO.May 2017
Joined as one of Cognition’s first international hires to spearhead our 0→1 international expansion across the Middle East, APAC and Japan, building the GTM leadership, talent and operating infrastructure to support a multi-billion-dollar ARR ambition. GTM Expansion: Helped establish and scale Cognition’s presence across five strategic markets: Singapore, Japan, Australia, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Leadership & Talent: Hired and onboarded the founding teams, hiring 40+ leaders and GTM professionals across Sales, Deployed Engineering, Applied AI and other critical functions. Market Entry & Execution: Launched Cognition’s Saudi Regional HQ and supported entity establishment and operational launches across the UAE, Japan and Singapore in just three months. Commercial Scale: Built the regional GTM Talent strategy and operating foundations to accelerate enterprise market penetration, revenue growth and international expansion. So far, supported the company's journey from $190M ARR to $1B+ and a $15B valuation to $48B+.
🌍 Global GTM Expansion | Executive Search | Market Entry & Scale 15+ years building and scaling high-performing GTM organisations across global SaaS and technology companies, from early-stage growth through IPOs and acquisitions. Specialising in international market entry, GTM strategy, executive leadership, commercial talent, organisational design and scaling revenue-generating teams globally. Track record supporting high-growth companies including PagerDuty, MongoDB and Mendix. Trusted advisor to CROs, combining commercial strategy with hands-on execution.
Consulting as a Strategic Advisor to the CEO.
Led the global growth and performance strategy across Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan, scaling the organisation from $8 million to $22 million+ ARR.
*Acquired by Perforce Software March 2024* Hired by CRO as a people leader during a high-growth, business turnaround and pre-acquisition phase. Partnered closely with the executive team to align talent strategy and capacity planning, with a core focus on Sales and GTM functions, building a force management culture. Scaled $90mil to $170mil+ ARR.
*PagerDuty IPO April 2019* Hired by the CRO as the first hire in EMEA, scaled the WW Sales teams and all GTM teams in EMEA and APJ, ahead of a successful 2019 IPO. Scaled $60 to $200+ million ARR.
*MuleSoft IPO March 17, 2017, & acquired by Salesforce March 2018 for $6.5billion* ► Rebuilt and enabled the EMEA talent function ahead of MuleSoft IPO and $6.5bn Salesforce acquisition. ► Improved operational efficiency, leading the top-performing TA team globally.
*Demandware IPO March 15th 2012, & acquired by Salesforce June 2016 for $3 billion* Now called Salesforce Commerce Cloud. ► Led TA during post IPO and acquisition phase; drove talent branding and high velocity hiring across Europe and APAC.
Riyadh has been my home for nearly three years, and it’s heartbreaking to see the recent events unfolding in a city and country that have so warmly welcomed me, my family and the wider expat community. My thoughts and prayers are with the families who have lost loved ones, those injured and everyone affected. In times like these, humanity, compassion and solidarity matter more than ever. Praying for the safety, peace and stability of everyone in Riyadh and across the wider region. 🇸🇦🤍
linkedin.com/posts/azzyg_riyadh-has-been-my-home-for-nearly-three-activity-7515599188705857536-RMSinotedSingapore, who’s at the F1 today? 🏎️🇸🇬 Heading to the Sky View Suite, with plenty of our Cognition colleagues over in the Paddock too! If you’re an Enterprise AE, VP of Sales, Deployed Engineer, Field CTO or Head of Engineering, let’s meet. We’re building our teams across APJ and I’m looking to meet top talent. Around the suites or Paddock? Drop me a DM and let’s connect! Should be an exciting day! 🚀 Richard Spence Nicole Zuuring #CognitionAI #Devin #SingaporeGP #F1 #AstonMartinAramco
Singapore, team dinner and an F1 weekend ahead! 🇸🇬🏎️ A lovely evening at Marina Gardens with colleagues and leaders flying in from the US, Japan and Australia. Amazing to get everyone around one table, especially with a weekend cheering on Aston Martin Aramco as a proud sponsor! Singapore is our APAC HQ, led by Richard Spence! Devin also has a new home in our fabulous new shophouse office on Amoy Street and needs more colleagues! 😀 We’re hiring across every function, globally.🚀 Huge thanks to our wonderful field marketing team, led by Nicole Zuuring, one of the best in the business. These moments take work, and Nicole always makes them special. Want to help us build Cognition? Get in touch ☎️ 🚀 Russell Kaplan Scott Wu Emily Cohen Paul Grewal Takumi Masai Chris Degnan #CognitionAI #Devin #Singapore #Hiring #APJ #AstonMartinAramco #F1
“Everything’s in scope.” Including Singapore! 🇸🇬 Just landed from Tokyo and spotted our Devin campaign at Changi. A proud moment seeing the fruits of our labour reach more corners of the world. A brilliant week in Japan, capped off by our engineering event. Huge thanks to our Japan team and everyone who joined us. 🇯🇵 Now a week with Richard Spence, meeting and interviewing leaders and Account Directors for our Majors business across APAC. Plenty to talk about following our recent announcements over the last weeks: 🚀 Over $2B in Series E funding at a $48B valuation 🤝 Chris Degnan joining as CRO after his incredible journey at Snowflake 📱 Devin Mobile in beta for iOS ⚡ Fusion up to 40% cheaper and Devin Review up to 70% cheaper 🔗 Deeper Microsoft integrations and our new MongoDB partnership Behind every announcement is our wonderful team making it happen. We’re looking for more exceptional people to help build what comes next. Singapore, ready to build with us? Let’s grab a coffee this week. 🚀 #Devin #CognitionAI #Singapore #APAC
What a night in Tokyo 🇯🇵 30+ highly established engineers and founders joined us for an evening of Devin, Deployed Engineering and a deep dive into Devin Security Swarm. Amazing people, Incredible venue with views, great food and drinks! Most importantly, some brilliant conversations and new connections. Japan continues to impress me with the depth of engineering talent here. Thank you to everyone who joined us and made the evening such a success! We’ll definitely be doing more of these around the world over the coming months. The question is… where will Devin and friends be travelling to next? 👀🌎 Takumi Masai Akira Shibata, PhD Hiroshi Sakurai Russell Kaplan Scott Wu Emily Cohen #Devin #CognitionAI #Tokyo #AI
Tokyo 🇯🇵 A few weeks ago, I asked if you could guess where Devin was heading next! Tonight, with Devin and friends we're hosting an exclusive, invite only evening focused on Deployed Engineering, showcasing Devin in action and bringing together some of the best technical talent in the market. We’re now at full capacity, which says a lot about the level of interest and excitement around what we’re building in Japan! 🚀 Looking forward to a great evening of product, engineering, conversation and new connections. Takumi Masai Akira Shibata, PhD Hiroshi Sakurai Kenji Itoh Daisuke Ohno Hitomi Sawamura Natt Saelim Mao Morimitsu Scott Wu Russell Kaplan Emily Cohen Kevin Lee Benjamin L. Ray Aun Fan Ricky Kartolo Ciarán Deasy Rohan Pai #Devin #CognitionAI #Tokyo #DeployedEngineering
🇯🇵 Back in Tokyo for the week. 🚀 Great to be back in Japan, and there’s a lot happening at Cognition. This week I’m running an event with Akira Shibata Kevin Lee and Hiroshi Sakurai focused on Deployed Engineering and Devin, bringing together some of the best engineers in Tokyo to go deeper on what we’re building, how Devin is being deployed in the real world, and what the future of software engineering looks like. I’ll also be spending time with Takumi Masai interviewing for our first RVP search as we continue building out the leadership team for the next phase of Cognition Japan. Lots of awesome compounding news this month: Cognition announced our $2B Series E at a $48B valuation and $1B+ ARR milestone. At the same time, Devin keeps evolving at an incredible pace. We’ve recently launched Code Scans, brought macOS to Devin, introduced Devin Plugins for enterprise governance and scale, and continued expanding the frontier models available within Devin. It’s awesome being on the Avengers! 🔥 #Devin #CognitionAI #Japan #dreamteam
What an amazing milestone at Cognition. It's been a phenomenal ride so far, building with an amazing team, all for our wonderful customers and partners. Lot's more to come this year! 🚀 #dreamteam #Devin #CognitionAI https://lnkd.in/dgjasjBZ
Leaving SF with slightly more engineers than I arrived with… 🦦👀 An amazing week at Cognition HQ, hosting H.E. Abdullah Alswaha of Ministry of Communications and Information Technology of Saudi Arabia, Tareq Amin of HUMAIN, and the visiting delegation, as well as celebrating our Series E round with the team. A lot to be proud of and even more to come! Next stop for me: Riyadh 🇸🇦 As for Devin and friends, they’re packed and have a few international plans of their own. Some might be meeting a new crowd of builders further east in a few weeks… Any guesses where? 👀 Go for it all. 🚀 #Devin #CognitionAI #dreamteam
This is what happens when exceptional talent, high agency, customer obsession and insane speed come together. Today Cognition launched SWE-2, our closest model yet to the frontier. It performs on par with recent frontier models across leading coding evaluations at up to 70% lower cost. On FrontierCode 1.1, it matches Fable 5.1 at 64% lower cost. From a People and Talent perspective, this is why talent density matters so much. We have grown at an extraordinary pace, but the secret behind the tech is the quality of the people we have brought together and what they are capable of shipping. In a remarkably short period of time, Cognition has grown into the leading independent AI lab for autonomous software engineering. We are scaling globally, pushing the frontier and building products our own teams use every day to do real work. SWE-2 is another huge step forward! Go for it all. Every second counts. 🚀 #Devin #CognitionAI #dreamteam
Loved celebrating our latest fundraising round at HQ this week. 🎂🚀 Another milestone for Cognition, and the momentum behind what we are building keeps accelerating. Our founders and colleagues rock! Go for it all. 🚀 #Devin #CognitionAI #seriesE #dreamteam
What a week so far and some breaking news! 🚀 Cognition has raised over $2B at a $48B valuation - Series E 🎉 Insane milestone, but the numbers I love even more: Since May, run-rate revenue has gone from $492M to $900M+, and the amount of real work Devin is doing for customers has grown even faster. Amazing use case delivery with giga customers such as NVIDIA, GE Aerospace, Citi, Mercedes-Benz and many more! There is way more software worth building than the world has the capacity to build today and Devin, the Autonomous Software Engineer, changes the game! The self-driving software era is here and we are just getting started! Mega proud to be part of this team and what we are building globally. Go for it all 🚀 #Devin #CognitionAI #dreamteam
