# Sara Xiang

![Sara Xiang](/resources/cognition/portraits/sara-xiang.webp)

Founding Product Manager at Cognition (Devin, Windsurf); ex-Head of Content Understanding at Scale AI  
Cognition  
San Francisco Bay Area

## At Cognition

- Role: Human Product Manager (Product)
- Joined: Jan 2023
- How they joined: Directly
- Before Cognition: Member, South Park Commons
- Overlapped before Cognition with other Cognition people at: Scale AI; Meta (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/worked-together)

## Identity
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saraxiang
- X: @sarayxiang
- GitHub: https://github.com/saraxiang
- Domain: cognition.ai

## Notes
- Credited as a co-lead of Devin's MCP launch (MCP Marketplace, Datadog/Sentry integrations) in July 2025: Cognition's Theodor Marcu wrote 'Sara Xiang + Federico Marcos + Jeffrey Ling really cooked with this launch (I just got to be in the video but they deserve all the credit)'. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/theodormarcu_sara-xiang-federico-marcos-jeffrey-ling-activity-7353898027507441664-wGZO)
- Pioneered Devin's video player ('timeline') feature, which lets users scrub step by step through every action Devin took across shell, editor and browser; Feature or Future newsletter interviewed her as 'the Cognition PM who pioneered this feature'. (https://futureorfriction.substack.com/p/cognition)
- Joined Cognition in September 2023 as Founding Product Manager (LinkedIn); public title elsewhere is 'Human Product Manager', a joke contrasting her with Devin, Cognition's AI software engineer. Joining ~6 months before Devin's March 2024 public launch puts her among the earliest product hires. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/saraxiang)
- Named to Exceptional Capital's Exceptional 100 (2026): 'Sara is a product manager at Cognition, having previously worked at Scale AI.' (https://www.exceptionalcap.com/exceptional100_2026)
- Cognition's August 2025 Linear integration upgrade (Devin auto-generating 'Linear Knowledge' from past tickets and PRs to scope tickets) drew 'Congrats Sara Xiang!!' comments. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cognition-ai-labs_we-shipped-major-upgrades-to-devins-linear-activity-7363618437266329602-Y_qj)
- Per the interview, the video player began as an internal observability tool for the Cognition team to track Devin's behavior with screenshots at each step; Xiang extended it to users, drawing inspiration from YouTube and other video players. (https://futureorfriction.substack.com/p/cognition)
- She cited interacting with a human coworker as the source of many Devin design decisions, e.g. users 'taking over' Devin's machine like tapping a coworker on the shoulder, and a 'Devin is typing...' placeholder instead of token streaming, mimicking Slack. Her design philosophy is making agents feel like colleagues. (https://futureorfriction.substack.com/p/cognition)
- Spent ~3.5 years at Scale AI (Jan 2019 to Jul 2022): Product & Engineering Manager, then Head of Content Understanding (also listed as General Manager, Content Understanding), the unit serving content-moderation and content-classification data labeling. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/saraxiang)
- Tagged with Bobby Nobakht on the September 2025 SonarSource partnership announcing the SonarQube MCP Server in Windsurf's Cascade MCP Store and Devin's MCP Marketplace. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sonarsource_sonarqube-windsurf-devin-activity-7374441551252545537-wGHE)
- Marcu's same July 2025 post closes 'And with Windsurf, we'll cook even harder than ever before', written days after Cognition agreed to acquire Windsurf (July 2025); Xiang's later partner launches (SonarQube MCP in Windsurf and Devin) span both products. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/theodormarcu_sara-xiang-federico-marcos-jeffrey-ling-activity-7353898027507441664-wGZO)
- Public headline says "Building Cognition". (https://www.linkedin.com/in/saraxiang)
- Thanked by Greylock (Sophia Luo) for thought partnership in its 2025 essay on AI-native user research, alongside Aatish Nayak, Bihan Jiang and Kevin Hou. (https://greylock.com/blog/ai-user-research/)
- Software engineer at Facebook on Oculus (2017-2018) and intern at Twitter on Twitter Moments (2016). Her GitHub shows ReactVRKeyboard (2017) and a VR project, matching the Oculus/VR work. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/saraxiang)
- Introduction to Computing camp mentor team: Tina Tang, Taylor Paschal, Audrey Moeller, Natalie Geraci, Priya Thomas, Priscilla Wu, with Jessica and Sara Xiang; written up in ACM-W Connections, October 2014. (https://women.acm.org/wp-content/uploads/ACMW-Webpage/Newsletters/Articles/2014-10-Xiang_summer_camp.pdf)
- B.S. in Computer Science with a minor in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University, graduated with University Honors; the HCI minor lines up with her later agent-UX work. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/saraxiang)
- Devpost lists a PennApps XIV hackathon VR project ('Enjoying and relaxing to some soothing songs in a virtual reality room') by Andrew Sy, Jessica Xiang, Sara Xiang and David Ongchoco. (https://pennapps-xiv.devpost.com/project-gallery?page=5)
- Previous roles include Member at South Park Commons; Head of Content Understanding at Scale AI; Product & Engineering Manager at Scale AI; Software Engineering at Facebook; Software Engineering at Twitter. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/saraxiang)
- Her X account @sarayxiang (joined March 2014, ~528 followers) is nearly dormant, with only 18 posts, mostly 2016-2019 retweets (e.g. Scale AI coverage); she does not post publicly about Cognition there. (https://x.com/sarayxiang)
- Posted on LinkedIn in 2019 that 'Scale is moving out of our offices in mid November' and offered the space for sublease. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/saraxiang_sf-startup-friends-scale-is-moving-out-of-activity-6590810068235665408-cCWO)
- Location is San Francisco Bay Area. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/saraxiang)

## Experience
- Founding Product Manager at Cognition - San Francisco Bay Area (Sep 2023 - Present)
- Member at South Park Commons - New York, New York (Jan 2022 - Jan 2023)
- Head of Content Understanding at Scale AI - San Francisco, California (Jan 2021 - Jul 2022)
- Product & Engineering Manager at Scale AI - San Francisco, California (Jan 2019 - Jan 2021): Scale is the data platform for AI. 

Used by ML teams at OpenAI, Airbnb, Nuro, Lyft and more. Funded by Founders Fund, Accel, Index, Coatue, Thrive, Spark, Y Combinator.
- Software Engineering at Facebook - Menlo Park, California (Jan 2017 - Jan 2018): Oculus
- Software Engineering at Twitter - San Francisco, California (Jan 2016 - Jan 2016): Twitter Moments

## Education
- Carnegie Mellon University - Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Computer Science,  Minor in Human Computer Interaction: Graduated with University Honors

## Sources
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/saraxiang
- https://x.com/sarayxiang
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/saraxiang_sf-startup-friends-scale-is-moving-out-of-activity-6590810068235665408-cCWO
- https://www.exceptionalcap.com/exceptional100_2026
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/founderstoday_cognition-introduces-devin-the-worlds-first-activity-7173746884442771458-cB6s
- https://greylock.com/blog/ai-user-research/
- https://github.com/saraxiang
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cognition-ai-labs_we-shipped-major-upgrades-to-devins-linear-activity-7363618437266329602-Y_qj
- https://www.boringbusinessnerd.com/startups/arena
- https://women.acm.org/wp-content/uploads/ACMW-Webpage/Newsletters/Articles/2014-10-Xiang_summer_camp.pdf
- https://pennapps-xiv.devpost.com/project-gallery?page=5
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sonarsource_sonarqube-windsurf-devin-activity-7374441551252545537-wGHE
- https://futureorfriction.substack.com/p/cognition
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/theodormarcu_sara-xiang-federico-marcos-jeffrey-ling-activity-7353898027507441664-wGZO
- https://api.github.com/users/saraxiang/repos?per_page=100&sort=updated
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/erichli1_future-or-friction-cognitions-video-player-activity-7221251784252551168-twU0


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