Engineering · Member of Technical Staff

Michael Dong

“twenty six year cicada”

LinkedInGitHubWebsite
Joined
Jul 2026
How they joined
Directly
Before Cognition
ApartmentIndependent Studies
Status
Current

Autumn profile

Researched with Autumn · 2026-11-04
Details
LocationSan Francisco, California, United States
Company sitecognition.ai
UniversityUniversity of Maryland
Angry DM
Notes
  • Co-founded Operator (initially named Dot Product) in 2024 alongside Maksim Stepanenko and Usman Masood; Times of Central Asia pictures the three together and describes Operator as an AI-agent platform for voice and messaging channels whose first product was a customer-support voice agent.Oct 22, 2026
  • Operator raised $6 million from investors including Index Ventures, Lachy Groom and Conviction before OpenAI acquired it; Dong's LinkedIn lists the role as 'Co-Founder at Operator (acq. OpenAI)' from Jul 2024 to May 2025. The company Dong co-founded was bought by OpenAI, not by Cognition.May 2025
  • Operator co-founder Usman Masood was previously VP of Engineering at Pipe, where Dong was Staff Software Engineer (2021-2023).Mar 2024
  • Public headline says "twenty six year cicada".
  • Personal homepage sunsetglow.net says: "I was formerly a Staff Engineer at Pipe and cofounder of Operator."
  • Wrote the longform essay 'Exposition of Frontend Build Systems' on his site.Jun 8, 2024
  • i like theology, history, and classics with focus on tiantai and huayan buddhism. generalist software engineer. academic interests in databases and peer-to-peer systems; this comes from the profile summary and preserves the person's own positioning.
  • Most-starred open source project is pixiv-api (131 stars), a documented, tested Python wrapper around Pixiv's App API; the homepage highlights Rose, a music management system (azuline/rose), which lists devin-ai-integration[bot] as a contributor.
  • Previous roles include Independent Studies at Apartment; Technical Advisor at CFO Advisors; Co-Founder at Operator (acq. OpenAI); Independent Studies at Basement; Staff Software Engineer at Pipe.
  • Education history includes Computer Science, University of Maryland; WSET 3, WSET.
  • Location is San Francisco, California, United States.

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Updated 2026-11-04 · 15 sources · Researched by Autumn · Research anyone like this

Compiled from public sources by Autumn · Updated 2026-11-04

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