About Cortex
What is Cortex?
Cortex builds the Engineering Operations platform — in its own words, a product that "enables organizations to continuously improve their operational maturity and reduce developer friction", using "centralized visibility, clear ownership, automated Scorecards, and golden paths" so that an engineering organisation "operates as one". More recent copy describes it as "an AI-powered Internal Developer Portal that enforces reliability standards across every team automatically, so organizations can move fast without breaking things." It was "built by engineers from companies like Uber and Twilio" who, as the about page puts it, know "what it feels like to get paged at 3 am for a service you've never seen before and frantically search for how to fix it." Customers named on its own site include Skyscanner, Xero, Rapid7, H&R Block, VistaPrint and BigCommerce. Cortex is SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certified.
Where will I work?
Fully remote in the United States. Every posting repeats the same paragraph: "We're fully remote and welcome candidates from across the US. We get together a few times a year for company offsites where we build stronger relationships, kick off important work, and genuinely enjoy spending time together." The careers page lists "Semi-Annual Company Offsites" among its benefits. Individual roles occasionally narrow the geography — a current Customer Success opening asks for candidates in the Pacific time zone because part of the book of business sits in the ANZ/APAC regions.
What is the Cortex team like?
"Our team is ~80 people building something developers actually want to use," the adverts say, following a $60M Series C led by Scale Ventures with participation from Sequoia and IVP. Four values run the place: Bias to Action ("We don't wait for perfect information"), Write the Rules ("We're creating an entirely new market category and writing our own playbook"), No Ego ("We're honest, direct, and always assume good intent. The best idea wins") and Embrace Growth ("The uncomfortable moments are where the real learning happens"). Starting salary ranges are published up front on every role, alongside a competitive equity package.
Work-Life Balance
Every advert lists "Unlimited PTO & flexible working hours", and Cortex's published culture memo is unusually direct about how it thinks about hours: "We don't measure success by hours worked, but by the urgency, efficiency, and tangible outcomes of your efforts. Cortex employees have vibrant lives outside of work – families, hobbies, and more; we expect intense focus and results-driven effort during working hours to achieve outsize results." The same memo describes building a startup as "a marathon at a record-breaking pace, requiring sustained intensity and exceptional productivity without burnout" — worth reading in full if pace matters to you. Cortex also offers a $400 monthly perks stipend to "use it on anything", plus pet insurance. It publishes no four-day week or compressed-hours policy.
Perks and Benefits
- Unlimited PTO and flexible working hours
- Medical, dental and vision, 100% covered for employees
- 401(k) plan
- Gender-neutral parental leave
- $1,000 yearly Learning & Development stipend
- Competitive equity package
- Semi-annual company offsites