Hi,
I'm Priya.

As a pre-med student switching to computer science, I had no idea what companies wanted. So I made it a habit to show up to every career fair, introduce myself, and just ask. My resume was thin - a hackathon I'd done for fun, some social clubs - but thankfully I was curious. After five hours of conversations at a fair the Microsoft line was finally short. I walked up, started talking, and somehow landed an interview for their PM internship. That conversation started the rest of my career.

When I graduated during the pandemic, accepting the full-time offer was easy. I'd found a team I enjoyed working with and knew product management was where I'd learn a lot and have fun.

I hit the ground running. My first feature was Instant Hotspot in Phone Link—a small win that taught me how to ship. Then I kept going: pulling the phone's webcam to make it accessible from PC, integrating phone files directly into File Explorer. Each launch taught me something new about cross-platform experiences and user needs.

Behind each feature was a full product cycle: competitive research, user flow mapping, design collaboration, engineering scoping, brand alignment with the content team, bug bashes, telemetry and analytics mapping, and launch planning with product marketing. The work paid off-I was promoted quickly and kept shipping.

But I couldn't stop thinking about AI in consumer tech. When the opportunity came to take on an additional role with my sister team, I jumped at it. We were building agents in Windows Settings to make troubleshooting easier for everyday users. I dove deep into MCPs, performance optimization, model training, data quality, and safety guardrails for autonomous agentic actions. I was teaching the team about AI while learning it myself.

After we shipped, I knew I wanted more. I wanted to go deeper into AI in product, and startups were calling my name. Upon exploring the market I noticed that there was a gap in the market—companies needed people with technical chops who could also be customer-facing. I decided to take the leap.

What drew me to Windsurf? Two things: it was a hot company, and the team seemed awesome. I knew I wanted to learn and grow, and a new role at a new company was a bold way to do it. I wanted to learn about sales, become a better speaker, and push myself outside my comfort zone.

The first few days were nuts. I spent every waking hour learning how to use Windsurf and understanding system architecture. Then came the whirlwind.

Day 5: half the company was taken to Google. Day 7: we were acquired by Cognition. A complete rollercoaster that taught me resilience and adaptability in ways a stable environment never could. It also led me to my next chapter.

As a deployed engineer at Cognition, I work directly with customers to unlock what's possible with autonomous agentic coding platforms. The role has evolved beyond what I imagined-I've helped close countless deals in the multi-million dollar range, working hands-on to understand customer needs and show them how AI can transform their engineering workflows.

I've learned more in this role than I could have anticipated: the nuances of enterprise sales, how to speak to different customer personas, the differences between enterprise and consumer markets, the intricacies of model performance in production environments. Every conversation teaches me something new about what customers actually need versus what they think they need.

On top of my core role I've spent time solving other problems too! How do we get the best candidates to Cognition? How do we onboard and train new deployed engineers faster? How do we get more people knowing and learning about our products? What excites me most is that I'm still figuring out where I fit and what I want to build next at Cognition. The beauty of being at a startup is that the possibilities are endless, and I'm here for all of it.