# Tiancheng Qin

![Tiancheng Qin](/resources/cognition/portraits/tc-qin.webp)

Researcher at Cognition (SWE-1.7, FrontierCode); ex-Jane Street quant trader; MIT Math/CS; USAJMO winner  
Cognition  
New York, New York, United States

## At Cognition

- Role: Member of Technical Staff (Engineering)
- Joined: May 2026
- How they joined: Directly
- Before Cognition: Quantitative Trader, Jane Street
- Overlapped before Cognition with other Cognition people at: MIT; Jane Street; Pure Storage (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/worked-together)

## Identity
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiancheng-qin-43bb4614
- X: @Ectospirit
- GitHub: https://github.com/tcqin
- Domain: cognition.com

## Notes
- Credited in the Research byline of Cognition's SWE-1.7 launch (published 2026-07-08), Cognition's most capable model to date, RL post-trained from a Kimi K2.7 base and served in Devin Web, Desktop and CLI via Cerebras at 1000 TPS. (https://cognition.com/blog/swe-1-7)
- Joined Cognition as Member of Technical Staff in New York in May 2026 after nearly six years (Aug 2020 - Apr 2026) as a Quantitative Trader at Jane Street; LinkedIn headline now reads "Research @ Cognition". (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiancheng-qin-43bb4614)
- Posted on X on 2026-09-10, word for word: "4 months in and 2 models wiser, I can't wait to keep building with this team." which dates his start to roughly May 2026 and implies he has worked on two model releases. (https://x.com/Ectospirit/status/2098076903412551788)
- Co-author of FrontierCode 1.1 (2026-07-07) alongside Eric Lu, Ben Pan, Fermi Ma, Alex Lombardi, Deniz Birlikci, Sam Lee, Ray Wang, Rohan Choudhury, Carlo Baronio, Jacob Teo, Joon Hee Lee and Silas Alberti, the eval used as SWE-1.7's headline score. (https://cognition.com/blog/frontier-code-1.1)
- Co-author of "Introducing FrontierCode" (2026-06-08), Cognition's benchmark asking whether models write good code, not just correct code; the SWE-1.7 post cites it as reference [1] with TC Qin among ten authors. (https://cognition.com/blog/frontier-code)
- Early-2026 side projects on GitHub, built in the months before leaving Jane Street, form a clear RL ramp: go-bot (Feb 2026, "Builds on Katago to focus on interpretability"), alphago-9x9 (Feb-Mar 2026, "Replicates the original AlphaGo network on a 9x9 board") and cuda-rl (Mar 2026, "Multi-turn RL for writing CUDA kernels"). (https://github.com/tcqin)
- In March 2024, while still at Jane Street and the same month Cognition unveiled Devin, he created a public GitHub repo tcqin/devin_ai described as "My attempt at replicating Devin.". (https://github.com/tcqin/devin_ai)
- AlphaStar Academy instructor bio lists: MOP Qualifier (2014); USAJMO (2014: Winner; 2013: Honorable Mention); AMC 10 Perfect Scorer (2014); BMT (2014: 4th Place Individual, 3rd Place Geometry); ARML (2013: 1st Place Team). He taught at the A* 2015 Summer Camp, the same cohort as Sean Shi. (https://alphastar.academy/math-winter-camp/)
- Posted on X on 2026-07-08 (SWE-1.7 launch day), word for word: "Never thought I’d be a part of a team that pushes the pareto frontier for coding!" (https://x.com/Ectospirit/status/2074886686002340129)
- Mathematics Magazine's report on the 43rd USAMO / 5th USAJMO (2014) lists "Tiancheng Qin 10 Mission San Jose High" among top scorers, matching the USAJMO 2014 winner credential. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.4169/math.mag.87.4.301)
- Posted on X on 2026-09-08, word for word: "So blessed to be a part of this team", and replied to @cognition the same day with "🚀🚀🚀". (https://x.com/Ectospirit/status/2097427849292755114)
- Posted on X on 2026-08-19, word for word: "with devin I never have to choose"; the same day on LinkedIn he wrote, word for word: "At Cognition we never have to choose because Devin AI does it all." (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tiancheng-qin-43bb4614_at-cognition-we-never-have-to-choose-because-activity-7495912422407348224-2S7v)
- At MIT he did a UROP with the MIT Media Lab Personal Robots Group, published as repo robot-affect-recognition ("Robot Affect Recognition UROP for the Personal Robots Group.", Jan 2019). (https://github.com/tcqin/robot-affect-recognition)
- Public headline says "Research @ Cognition". (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiancheng-qin-43bb4614)
- Public headline says "Quantitative Trader at Jane Street". (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiancheng-qin-43bb4614)
- Replied to @cognition on 2026-09-10, word for word: "⬅️ Up and to the left! ⬆️". (https://x.com/Ectospirit/status/2098071127931441292)
- MIT 2020 Commencement program lists Tiancheng Qin "Also with a Major in Course XVIII. Minor in Music." (Course 6-3 plus 18). (https://commencement.mit.edu/sites/default/files/2020-06/MITCommencement2020Program.May29Edition.pdf)
- MIT Poker Club alumni page: "TC graduated in 2020 with a double major in Math and Computer Science, and is now working full time at Jane Street"; he also lists beatboxing, rock climbing, card games and puzzles. (https://poker.mit.edu/alumni)
- Interned as a Software Engineering Intern at Pure Storage (Mountain View, Jun-Aug 2017), implementing SNMPv3 support with authentication and privacy encryption across the GUI and CLI. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiancheng-qin-43bb4614)
- Hi, my name is Tiancheng (TC) Qin, and I'm currently a student at MIT planning on double majoring in Courses 6-3 (Computer Science/Engineering) and 18 (Math). I'm interested in software engineering and quantitative trading; this comes from the profile summary and preserves the person's own positioning. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiancheng-qin-43bb4614)
- FINRA BrokerCheck shows Tiancheng Qin as a previously registered representative of Jane Street Capital, LLC, New York. (https://brokercheck.finra.org/individual/summary/7128888)
- Rostered on the MIT team in the Intercollegiate Poker Association for 2019-2020 alongside Daniel Sun and Brian Xie, with Kevin Jiang listed as leadership. (https://pokeripa.com/teams/massachusetts-institute-of-technology-2019-2020/)
- Also built resy-bot (Feb 2026, "Bot for making reservations on Resy") and, in 2018, headsup, "A NLHE poker heads-up web app" in JavaScript. (https://github.com/tcqin)
- Data Scientist Intern at Twnel (Cambridge, Jan 2017), building an RNN/LSTM recommendation algorithm for messaging options in a mobile messenger for independent professionals. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiancheng-qin-43bb4614)
- Taught Mathcounts and AMC 10/12 at Star League / A-Star (Jul 2015 - Apr 2016), writing hundreds of problems and LaTeX handouts. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiancheng-qin-43bb4614)
- Posted on 2026-09-09, word for word: "When I want to factor 260 I use my brain. When I want to factor RSA-260 I talk to @penlume". (https://x.com/Ectospirit/status/2097814047295242300)
- Same handle "Ectospirit" is used on X, Instagram (Tiancheng Qin, @ectospirit, bouldering posts at The Cliffs Gowanus) and goproblems.com (ectospirit, 3 dan, registered 2009). (https://goproblems.com/user/ectospirit)
- Listed on the USAMTS Year 24 (2012-2013) leaderboard as "Tiancheng Qin (9, CA)". (https://www.usamts.org/leaderboard/?year=24)
- Location is New York, New York, United States. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiancheng-qin-43bb4614)

## Experience
- Member of Technical Staff at Cognition - New York, United States (May 2026 - Present)
- Quantitative Trader at Jane Street - New York, New York, United States (Aug 2020 - Apr 2026)
- Software Engineering Intern at Pure Storage - Mountain View, California (Jun 2017 - Aug 2017): I implemented support for SNMPv3 by adding cryptographic security to allow for authentication and privacy encryption. I also modified the GUI and CLI interfaces to support SNMPv3 agents and security measures.
- Data Scientist Intern at Twnel - Cambridge, Massachusetts (Jan 2017 - Jan 2017): I developed a recommendation algorithm for the mobile messenger for independent professionals in the emerging marketplace using recurrent neural networks and LSTM models to suggest messaging options.

## Education
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Bachelor’s Degree, Math and Computer Science/Engineering - (Jan 2016 - Jan 2019): Coursework:
6.01 (Introduction to EECS)
18.701 (Abstract Algebra)
18.06 (Linear Algebra)
18.03 (Differential Equations)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Bachelor’s Degree, Math and Computer Science/Engineering - (Jan 2016 - Dec 2019): MIT Poker Club: Committee Member
Zeta Beta Tau
Syncopasian (MIT's East Asian Premier A Capella Group)
Asian Dance Team

## Sources
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiancheng-qin-43bb4614
- https://cognition.com/blog/swe-1-7
- https://alphastar.academy/math-winter-camp/
- https://api.github.com/users/tcqin/repos?per_page=100
- https://poker.mit.edu/alumni
- https://cognition.com/blog/frontier-code
- https://cognition.com/blog/frontier-code-1.1
- https://x.com/Ectospirit
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiancheng-qin-43bb4614?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAAAMEMu8BeD2wkdjvHbrzldL6giViAFLlBIQ
- https://github.com/tcqin/robot-affect-recognition
- https://pokeripa.com/teams/massachusetts-institute-of-technology-2019-2020/
- https://www.usamts.org/leaderboard/?year=24
- https://goproblems.com/user/ectospirit
- https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.4169/math.mag.87.4.301
- https://commencement.mit.edu/sites/default/files/2020-06/MITCommencement2020Program.May29Edition.pdf
- https://brokercheck.finra.org/individual/summary/7128888
- https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf
- https://github.com/tcqin
- https://x.com/Ectospirit/status/2098076903412551788
- https://github.com/tcqin/devin_ai
- https://x.com/Ectospirit/status/2074886686002340129
- https://x.com/Ectospirit/status/2097427849292755114
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tiancheng-qin-43bb4614_at-cognition-we-never-have-to-choose-because-activity-7495912422407348224-2S7v
- https://x.com/Ectospirit/status/2098071127931441292
- https://x.com/Ectospirit/status/2097814047295242300
- https://x.com/Ectospirit/status/2080788773013803202


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