Russell Kaplan in

Russell Kaplan

Login to view DISC.
President at Cognition
📍 San Francisco Bay Area, United States

Russell Kaplan is the President of Cognition, the company behind Devin, the first AI software engineer. A Stanford University alumnus with both a B. S. and M. S. , he previously led the machine learning organization at Scale AI and was a senior ML scientist on Teslas Autopilot team, where he developed key vision models.

Originally from New York, Russells passion for programming and AI began in high school. While at Stanford, he founded TreeHacks, the universitys flagship hackathon, demonstrating a commitment to fostering innovation and building tech communities. He also co-founded Helia, a computer vision startup that was acquired by Scale AI.

He created HydraNet, the large-scale multitask neural network that became the core vision model for Teslas Autopilot system.

Read the full overview →
Experience
12 Years
Current Role
President
Location
San Francisco Bay Area, United States
Personality Overview

How Russell shows up

Communication Style
Decision Approach
Work Preference

Behavioral traits and communication patterns that shape how this person evaluates opportunities, builds trust, and makes decisions in professional settings.

Login to view personality overview.
Priorities

Topics Russell cares about

AI Software Engineering
As President of Cognition, he is at the forefront of creating autonomous AI agents, like Devin, to handle complex software development tasks from start to finish.
Computer Vision
His career is rooted in computer vision, from developing Tesla's Autopilot stack to founding Helia, a startup focused on real-time video understanding.
+5 more topics Login to view topics
Career

Work history

2024
President
Cognition
2020 - 2024
Director of Engineering & ML
Scale AI
2019 - 2020
Co-founder & CEO
Helia
2017 - 2019
Sr. Machine Learning Scientist (Autopilot)
Tesla
2014 - 2017
Founder & Co-Director
TreeHacks
In the press

Media appearances

The Future of Software Engineering: Cognition's Russell Kaplan. Featured in Goldman Sachs
See now
The Future of Software Engineering: Cognition's Russell Kaplan. Featured in YouTube
+1 more appearances Login to view media
Education
M.S.
Stanford University
B.S. with Distinction
Stanford University
Social presence
in
Behavioral profile

DISC profile (public)

DISC behavioral profile

Dominance, influence, steadiness, and calculativeness scores with guidance on how this person prefers to communicate and decide.

Login to view DISC.

Other Cognition Employees

Explore more public profiles from related professionals.

More profiles

Discover additional public profiles from our index.

Unlock the full playbookSee exactly how to sell to Russell. Free, 10 seconds.