Cognee

AI memory and knowledge graphs

Head of Operations & Finance

Corporate Finance & FP&APosted on Nov 12

Full-timeBerlin, Germany

About the Job

Requirements

Requires 2–4+ years of experience in finance or operations at a venture-backed startup, or in venture capital or consulting.
Must be able to read and question a profit and loss statement and balance sheet, and have built a financial model from scratch.
Requires working knowledge of German corporate, tax, and employment topics, including UG/GmbH, HGB, and payroll; experience in a US-German group structure is ideal.
Must be willing to work with AI agents and automation tools before requesting additional team resources.
Must explain financial and legal topics to people without that background and communicate confidently with founders, the board, and investors.
Requires fluent written and spoken English and German.

Responsibilities

Run bookkeeping, monthly closing, annual accounts, payroll, and tax filings for the US Inc. and German entity with external accountants and tax advisors.
Automate customer invoicing, billing, and payment collection, and manage vendor invoices and payment runs.
Own the financial model, budget, and cash planning, documenting them so others can use them; prepare investor updates and board materials and keep the data room ready for due diligence.
Manage agreements, transfer pricing, invoicing, cash flows, and banking between the US and EU entities.
Lead applications, cost tracking, and reporting for public funding programs.
Replace manual processes in finance, sales operations, and HR with automated workflows and AI agents, and help the team do the same.
Lead hiring end to end, including job ads, sourcing, screening, offers, contracts, and onboarding.
Manage external tax, payroll, and legal advisors; set priorities and develop team members while remaining hands-on with operational work.
As the company scales, hire and lead a larger team across finance, legal, and people operations.

Desired Qualifications

Python and SQL are a plus.
Knowledge of German corporate, tax, and employment topics in a US-German group structure is ideal.

Head of Operations & Finance

Topoteretes UG (haftungsbeschränkt) · Berlin, Germany · Full-time · Posted 2026-11-12

Salary: EUR 60,000–90,000

Workplace: on_site

Description

About Cognee

Cognee builds the memory engine and data plane for AI agents to plan, reason, and act. Our open-source Python and Rust SDK is in production at 500+ companies, runs 10 million times a month, and has hit GitHub Trending several times.

We raised a $7.5m seed round from Pebblebed Ventures in San Francisco, founded by the founding engineers of OpenAI and the Facebook AI research lab. We are a team of around 25, with a US parent company and a German subsidiary in Berlin.

Role Overview

As Head of Operations & Finance (full-time, on-site in Berlin) you join Cognee's leadership team and lead finance, legal, compliance, grants, and people operations across our US and German entities. You report directly to the CEO.

The role is hands-on. You manage our external advisors for tax, payroll, and legal. You set the priorities, develop the people who work with you, and stay close to the work: when it matters, you close the books, draft the contract, or build the automation yourself.

The role also grows with the company. As Cognee scales, you will hire and lead a larger team across finance, legal, and people operations, and your own responsibility grows with it.

What you'll do

Finance and accounting. Run bookkeeping, monthly closing, annual accounts, payroll, and tax filings for the US Inc. and the German entity, together with our external accountants and tax advisors.
Build the billing engine. Automate invoicing, billing, and payment collection for customers, and manage vendor invoices and payment runs.
Planning and reporting. Own the financial model, budget, and cash planning, documented so that others can work with it. Prepare investor updates and board materials, and keep the data room ready for due diligence at any time.
Intercompany. Manage the agreements, transfer pricing, invoicing, and cash flows between the US and EU entities, and keep banking in order on both sides.
Grants. Lead applications, cost tracking, and reporting for public funding programs.
Automation and agents. Replace manual processes in finance, sales operations, and HR with automated workflows and AI agents, and help the rest of the team do the same.
Recruiting. Lead hiring end to end, from job ads, sourcing, and screening to offers, contracts, and onboarding.

Requirements

Relevant experience. 2-4+ years in finance or operations at a venture-backed startup, or in venture capital or consulting.
Finance foundations. You can read and question a P&L and balance sheet, and you have built a financial model from scratch.
German basics. Working knowledge of German corporate, tax, and employment topics (UG/GmbH, HGB, payroll), ideally in a US-German group structure.
Appetite for automation. You work with AI agents and automation tools before you ask for more team resources. Python and SQL are a plus.
Clear communication. You explain financial and legal topics to people without that background, and you are confident in front of founders, the board, and investors.
Languages. Fluent English and German, written and spoken.

Benefits

Why you should come work at Cognee in Berlin

A strong salary plus stock options
A seat on the leadership team
Access to the San Francisco ecosystem, with trips to our office in the Bay Area
An office in Kreuzberg with company-sponsored meals and an office dog

Send your CV and LinkedIn or X profile to [email protected], or reach out directly via LinkedIn.

Apply

Apply at Topoteretes UG (haftungsbeschränkt)

About the Company

Cognee

AI memory and knowledge graphs

Cognee is an AI infrastructure provider based in Berlin that builds a structured memory layer for AI systems and agents. Its open-source stack converts unstructured enterprise data into persistent knowledge graphs and semantic representations so agents can retain context, reason across connected information, and reduce hallucinations compared with stateless retrieval or short context windows. The product helps organizations run knowledge-intensive workloads in regulated domains by maintaining long-term memory and reliable graph-based representations in production. Cognee differentiates itself from competitors by offering a persistent memory layer and knowledge graph technology that keeps context across sessions and data sources, emphasizing enterprise reliability and production-grade deployment. The company’s goal is to enable AI systems to retain context over time, reason across connected information, and operate in real-world enterprise environments at scale.

Company size: 11-50
Company stage: Series A
Total funding: $9.2M
Headquarters: Berlin, Germany
Founded: 2024

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