# Samuel Hsiang

Member of Technical Staff at Cognition (Devin/Windsurf); ex-Hudson River Trading, ex-Nuro; USACO finalist and CS Guide co-author  
Cognition  
New York, New York, United States

## At Cognition

- Role: Member of Technical Staff (Engineering)
- Joined: Jan 2026
- How they joined: Directly
- Before Cognition: Algorithm Engineer, Hudson River Trading
- Overlapped before Cognition with other Cognition people at: Nuro; Harvard University; Hudson River Trading (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/worked-together)

## Identity
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samuel-hsiang
- X: @SamuelHsiang
- GitHub: https://github.com/alwayswimmin

## Notes
- Posted on X on 2026-02-24, word for word: "it's never been a better time to build, and it's never been easier to try devin!", a public push for Cognition's Devin about seven weeks after joining. (https://x.com/SamuelHsiang/status/2026384851071275147)
- Posted on X on 2026-02-11, word for word: "doing my part.

Co-authored-by: Staging-Devin AI". The joke is a git commit trailer crediting an internal staging build of Devin as co-author, which suggests he ships code with Devin internally (dogfooding). (https://x.com/SamuelHsiang/status/2021464376876892219)
- Joined Cognition (maker of Devin and Windsurf) as a Member of Technical Staff in January 2026, after roughly two years at Hudson River Trading; he joined about six months after Cognition's July 2025 Windsurf acquisition. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/samuel-hsiang)
- Co-authored the open-source 'Crash Course Coding Companion' / CS Guide (github.com/alwayswimmin/cs_guide, "Collection of Useful CS Algorithms", about 124 stars and 11 forks) with Alexander Wei (Phillips Exeter) and Yang Liu. It is a LaTeX competitive-programming textbook. (https://github.com/alwayswimmin/cs_guide)
- Algorithm Engineer at Hudson River Trading from February 2024 to January 2026, a quant/HFT algorithm role between his autonomous-vehicle and AI-agent work. Public sources do not name his specific HRT desk or team. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/samuel-hsiang)
- Won a silver medal at the US Physics Olympiad (USAPhO) with TJ Physics Team teammates Allen Cheng and Ross Dempsey (silver) and Charles Wang (gold); Franklyn Wang and Alexander Heckett took bronze. (https://physics-hugo.sites.tjhsst.edu/past/)
- Co-captain of the TJHSST Senior Computer Team in 2015-16 with captain Nate Foss, co-captain Ashley Kim and statistician Jason Lam (sponsor Mr. Rudwick). (https://activities.tjhsst.edu/sct/about)
- Cognition signed a definitive agreement to acquire Windsurf, the agentic IDE, in July 2025 (IP, product, trademark, brand and team); this is the company behind what is now Devin Desktop/Windsurf, the product line Hsiang works alongside. (https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf)
- Harvard University, Bachelor's in Statistics (AB 2020 class year per Harvard Alumni Day list; LinkedIn shows 2016-2019). He is listed among the Harvard Department of Statistics alumni. (https://alumni.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/2025-05/HAD_WCL_20250521.pdf)
- Codeforces handle alwayswimmin (Samuel Hsiang, from TJHSST): current rating 1946, max 2033 (Candidate Master). He uses the same handle on GitHub. (https://codeforces.com/profile/alwayswimmin)
- Reposted Michelle Lim's (@michlimlim) October 2025 launch of Flint, "autonomous" self-building websites; Flint later publicly noted it was already powering pages for @cognition. (https://x.com/SamuelHsiang/status/1978254617348579716)
- Won bronze at the Princeton University Physics Competition (PUPC) onsite round, and was on TJ's online PUPC team (Allen Cheng, Ross Dempsey, Ray Liu, Nirmaan Shanker, Akhil Waghmare) that earned an Honorable Mention. (https://physics-hugo.sites.tjhsst.edu/past/)
- Served as Manager (later Manager Emeritus) of the Harvard Glee Club, listed among its officers on the club's IRS 990 filing next to President Andrew Jing and Assistant Manager Matthew Li. (https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/42628384)
- An earlier TJ physics season records him silver on USAPhO, 34th overall in Division 1 and 1st in Region 1 as a Division 1 student (F=ma/Physics Bowl). (https://activities.tjhsst.edu/physics/past.html)
- On X he follows many Cognition people (founding engineer Tony Jiang, Matt Schrage, Ido Pesok, Nader Dabit, Bryce Hunt, Alex Kaplan) and fellow olympiad-to-Cognition alum Neal Wu. (https://x.com/SamuelHsiang)
- Captain of the TJHSST math team. Teammate Franklyn Wang started a tongue-in-cheek change.org petition to let "our beloved math team captain" out of detention for the last HMMT (Harvard-MIT Math Tournament) practice. (https://www.change.org/p/dr-evan-glazer-let-samuel-hsiang-our-beloved-math-team-captain-come-to-math-team)

## Experience
- Member of Technical Staff at Cognition (Jan 2026 - Present)
- Algorithm Engineer at Hudson River Trading (Feb 2024 - Jan 2026)
- Software Engineer at Nuro (Jun 2019 - Feb 2024)

## Education
- Harvard University - Bachelor's degree, Statistics - (Jan 2016 - Dec 2019)

## Sources
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/samuel-hsiang
- https://github.com/alwayswimmin
- https://x.com/SamuelHsiang
- https://codeforces.com/profile/alwayswimmin
- https://usaco.org/index.php?page=finalists14
- https://github.com/alwayswimmin/cs_guide
- https://physics-hugo.sites.tjhsst.edu/past/
- https://activities.tjhsst.edu/sct/about
- https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/42628384
- https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf
- https://me.sh/profile/hunter-lightman
- https://alumni.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/2025-05/HAD_WCL_20250521.pdf
- https://usaco.guide/general/resources-cp
- https://activities.tjhsst.edu/physics/past.html
- https://www.change.org/p/dr-evan-glazer-let-samuel-hsiang-our-beloved-math-team-captain-come-to-math-team
- https://x.com/charlie_meyer_
- https://x.com/SamuelHsiang/status/2026384851071275147
- https://x.com/SamuelHsiang/status/2021464376876892219
- https://x.com/SamuelHsiang/status/1978254617348579716


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