# Rick Zhang

Special Projects at Cognition (Devin, Windsurf); ex-Atlassian ML engineer; CMU Statistics & ML  
Cognition  
San Francisco, California, United States

## At Cognition

- Role: special projects (Research)
- Joined: Jan 2026
- How they joined: Directly
- Before Cognition: advisor, Various Companies

## Identity
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zhangrick
- Domain: cognition.ai

## Notes
- Said he had been 'working in the industry for a little over a year now as a Machine Learning Engineer at Atlassian'. (https://www.piketeams.com/creativecodingteam)
- In Golan Levin's CMU course 'Drawing with Machines' (2021 documentation), then-BFA sophomore Rick Zhang built a generative 'blob family' plotter drawing inspired by Salvador Dali's pocket watches, his visible early creative-coding work. (https://github.com/golanlevin/DrawingWithMachines/blob/main/documentation/2021/README.md)
- Member of the CMU Statistics & Data Science Fall 2023 capstone team 'Identifying Evolution in the NBA' with Ryan Mulcahy, Otto Sharples and Stephen Zhong. (https://www.stat.cmu.edu/capstoneresearch/fall2023/)
- Previous roles include advisor at Various Companies. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/zhangrick)
- CMU listing records the Fall 2023 36-315 statistical graphics capstone 'Identifying Evolution in the NBA', analyzing NBA game data from 2003-2022 on play style, rest/injury management and home-court advantage. (https://www.stat.cmu.edu/capstoneresearch/fall2023/315files_f23/team23.html)
- LinkedIn skills center on RAG, NLP, conversational AI and applied ML alongside graphic/logo design and AR, matching an ML-engineering career grounded in an art background. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/zhangrick)
- Location is San Francisco, California, United States. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/zhangrick)
- Based in San Francisco, California. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/zhangrick)

## Experience
- special projects at Cognition (Jan 2026 - Present)
- advisor at Various Companies (Jan 2025 - Jan 2026): advising eng & research at sequoia, founders fund, elad gil backed startups

## Education
- Carnegie Mellon University - Bachelor of Science - BS, Statistics & Machine Learning: Minors in Computer Science, Fine Arts

## Sources
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/zhangrick
- https://www.piketeams.com/creativecodingteam
- https://www.piketeams.com/
- https://www.stat.cmu.edu/capstoneresearch/fall2023/
- https://caspa.com/scholars-2018/
- https://cognition.ai/blog/windsurf
- https://www.stat.cmu.edu/capstoneresearch/fall2023/315files_f23/team23.html
- https://github.com/golanlevin/DrawingWithMachines/blob/main/documentation/2021/README.md
- https://x.com/rzhang


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