Senior Consulting Manager - Lead AI DevOps Engineer

About Cognizant Consulting

Cognizant Consulting is more than Cognizant's consulting practice—we're a global community of 5,000+ experts dedicated to helping clients reimagine their business. Blending our deep industry and technology advisory capability, we create innovative business solutions for Fortune 500 clients. And now, we're looking for our next colleague who'll join us in shaping the future of business. Could it be you?

About the Role

As a Senior Consulting Manager - AI Delivery & Platform Engineering, you will make an impact by helping clients modernize software delivery through scalable CI/CD, platform engineering, cloud-native infrastructure, and AI-enabled development capabilities. You will lead strategic consulting engagements and work closely with executive stakeholders, technology leaders, software engineering organizations, and platform teams to improve delivery velocity, operational resilience, and engineering effectiveness.

This role combines consulting leadership, platform engineering expertise, and AI-enabled software delivery capabilities to drive transformation outcomes across large enterprise environments.

In this role, you will:

• Lead consulting engagements focused on platform engineering, DevOps modernization, cloud-native transformation, and AI-enabled software delivery.
• Develop enterprise delivery strategies and roadmaps that improve engineering productivity, software quality, release velocity, and operational excellence.
• Design and oversee implementation of enterprise CI/CD platforms using technologies such as GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, Jenkins, and related automation tools.
• Guide cloud-native software delivery initiatives leveraging Kubernetes, GitOps practices, Infrastructure as Code, observability platforms, and release management capabilities.
• Advise client technology leaders on platform engineering operating models, delivery transformation strategies, governance frameworks, and best practices.
• Enable AI-powered software delivery capabilities including AI-assisted development, model deployment automation, LLM evaluation workflows, and engineering governance controls.
• Build reusable accelerators, playbooks, reference architectures, engineering standards, and consulting assets that improve consistency and scalability across engagements.
• Mentor consulting and engineering teams while contributing to practice growth, innovation, thought leadership, and business development activities.

Work Model

We believe hybrid work is the way forward as we strive to provide flexibility wherever possible. Based on this role's business requirements, this position requires 3 days a week in a client or Cognizant office in Chicago, Illinois. Regardless of your working arrangement, we are here to support a healthy work-life balance through our various wellbeing programs.

The working arrangements for this role are accurate as of the date of posting. This may change based on the project you're engaged in, as well as business and client requirements. Rest assured, we will always be clear about role expectations.

What You Must Have to Be Considered

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, platform engineering, DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering, cloud transformation, or related disciplines.
• 5+ years of experience leading enterprise technology transformation initiatives and consulting engagements.
• Strong expertise with GitHub Actions and enterprise CI/CD platforms including GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, CircleCI, Buildkite, or Jenkins.
• Experience architecting and implementing Kubernetes-based platforms, GitOps solutions such as ArgoCD or Flux, Infrastructure as Code tools such as Terraform or Pulumi, and cloud-native deployment practices.
• Experience implementing observability solutions including OpenTelemetry, distributed tracing, logging, metrics collection, and software delivery performance measurement.
• Experience supporting AI-enabled applications, LLM workflows, AI development tooling, model operations, or agent-based systems in enterprise environments.
• Demonstrated ability to engage with senior client stakeholders and drive complex technology transformation programs from strategy through execution.
• Strong communication, facilitation, presentation, and stakeholder management skills.

These Will Help You Succeed

• Experience developing automation solutions and engineering tooling using Python and API integrations.
• Familiarity with progressive delivery solutions such as Argo Rollouts, Flagger, LaunchDarkly, or similar platforms.
• Exposure to AI evaluation, testing, observability, and governance frameworks such as Promptfoo, DeepEval, Ragas, LangSmith, Braintrust, or equivalent technologies.
• Experience developing reusable developer platforms, engineering accelerators, standards, and enablement assets.
• Experience leading consulting teams and managing large-scale enterprise delivery programs.
• Experience supporting business development efforts, client proposals, solution development, and practice growth initiatives.

We're excited to meet people who share our mission and can make an impact in a variety of ways. Don't hesitate to apply, even if you only meet the minimum requirements listed. Think about your transferable experiences and unique skills that make you stand out as someone who can bring new and exciting things to this role.

Compensation

$98,853 - $152,500 per year

This position is eligible for Cognizant's discretionary annual incentive program, based on performance and subject to the terms of Cognizant's applicable plans.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision and life insurance
• 401(k) plan and contributions
• Employee stock purchase plan
• Employee assistance program
• 10 paid holidays plus PTO
• Paid parental leave and fertility assistance
• Learning and development certifications and programs