Technical Delivery Lead, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

About Cognizant Consulting

Cognizant Consulting is more than Cognizant's consulting practice. We're a global community of experts dedicated to helping clients reimagine their business. Blending deep industry and technology advisory capabilities, we create innovative business solutions for Fortune 500 clients. Now, we're looking for our next colleague to help shape the future of business. Could it be you?

About the Role

As a Technical Delivery Lead, you will make an impact by leading delivery on large-scale modernisation programs, moving business-critical legacy applications onto cloud-native target platforms on AWS and retiring the platforms behind them. Our modernisation delivery is AI-led. We apply generative AI and agentic automation to the most labour-intensive phases of the lifecycle, including code analysis, business rule extraction, code transformation, test generation and data migration, with every AI-generated output subject to human review and approval before it is promoted.

You will be a valued member of Cognizant Consulting, working alongside client stakeholders, program leadership, solution and security architects, engineering and quality engineering teams, data migration specialists and incumbent third-party vendors to take a group of applications from inventory through to decommissioning.

In This Role, You Will:

Own end-to-end delivery for an assigned group of applications across the full modernisation lifecycle, spanning inventory and baseline, code analysis and business rule extraction, target architecture and design, build and integration, data migration, validation and testing, parity run, dual run, cutover, hyper-care and decommissioning.
Plan and sequence delivery around technical dependency chains at portfolio scale, so that the systems producing reference and transactional data migrate ahead of the systems that consume them, and upstream slippage is surfaced and mitigated before it propagates downstream.
Manage delivery against contracted milestones and formal acceptance criteria, assembling the evidence each stage gate requires, protecting the baselined scope, and raising change through the agreed mechanism where confirmed inventory deviates materially from that baseline rather than absorbing it silently.
Lead an AI-led, human-in-the-loop delivery model, sequencing agentic tooling across analysis, extraction, transformation and test generation, and treating review capacity, subject matter expert access and evidentiary quality as first-order delivery constraints.
Drive the quality and assurance gates, including system integration, regression, accessibility and non-functional testing, security and penetration testing, parity testing within agreed reconciliation tolerances, dual run reconciliation, business verification testing sign-off, and the joint go or no-go decision at cutover.
Coordinate third-party and incumbent vendors, including structured knowledge acquisition where an application is currently supported by another supplier and that handover gates the start of modernisation work.
Own the impact on the surrounding automation estate, from inventory and classification of the bots and robotic processes that interact with an application, through retrofit, remediation or replacement, to acceptance against baselined performance and business service levels.
Steer delivery through constrained-source situations, where source code is missing, unavailable, or restricted from AI-assisted analysis, and the specification must be reconstructed through structured subject matter expert sessions and corroborated against documentation, behaviour analysis, test cases and incident history.
Oversee data migration at scale, covering schema migration, trial loads, change data capture, rollback validation, reconciliation and cutover data preparation, together with archival for retiring applications.
Run client-facing governance with credibility, contributing to monthly performance reviews, quarterly business reviews, change advisory board representation and steering committee reporting, and maintaining the risk, assumption, issue, dependency and decision registers that underpin them.
Close the loop on exit, confirming legacy switch-off, licence and access removal, batch schedule retirement and the associated reduction in legacy platform consumption, so that benefit is realised progressively rather than deferred to the end of a program.

What Success Looks Like

Your applications move through their stage gates with acceptance evidence that stands up to client and audit scrutiny the first time it is presented.
Dependencies, whether on the client, an incumbent vendor or an external party with long lead times, are visible and actively worked well before they become schedule events.
AI acceleration translates into delivered, reviewed and accepted outcomes, not just generated artefacts.
Cutovers are uneventful, and the legacy footprint is verifiably gone afterwards.

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 is a hybrid position requiring 3 days a week in a client or Cognizant office in Sydney or Melbourne. Regardless of your working arrangement, we are here to support a healthy work-life balance through our various wellbeing programs.

What You Must Have to Be Considered

Substantial experience leading delivery on large-scale application modernisation, legacy platform exit or cloud migration programs in complex enterprise environments, with accountability for scope, schedule, quality, risk and dependencies.
Hands-on delivery leadership modernising complex legacy applications, across one or more treatment paths such as refactor, replatform, re-architect or retire, and a practical understanding of what each path demands of a delivery plan.
Experience delivering to AWS as a target platform, with working knowledge of landing zones, infrastructure as code, CI/CD pipelines, environment management and observability.
A track record of delivering under a contracted, milestone-based commercial model, including formal acceptance criteria, evidence obligations, change control and dependency management with a client and its other suppliers.
Demonstrated ability to plan and sequence work at portfolio scale, where the order of delivery is driven by technical dependency rather than convenience.
Experience taking business-critical systems through cutover, including production readiness, parity or dual run validation, rollback planning and post-go-live stabilisation.
Experience managing multi-vendor delivery environments, including incumbent transition and third-party coordination.
Excellent communication, facilitation and consulting skills, with the ability to influence decisions at executive level and hold a clear line on quality and risk under schedule pressure.

These Will Help You Succeed

Experience modernising legacy estates, such as monolithic Java, mainframes or .NET applications, on-premises packaged platforms, or end-of-life middleware and integration layers.
Telecommunications domain experience across billing, rating and mediation, usage and call detail record processing, customer and account management, or network and service assurance.
Practical experience of AI-assisted or agentic delivery tooling for code analysis, business rule extraction, transformation or test generation, and of the governance that keeps a human in the loop.
Large-scale data migration experience, including multi-terabyte estates, archival and tape disposition, and reconciliation-led validation.
Experience with robotic process automation or screen-automation estates, and with remediating them alongside the applications they drive.
Delivery in a regulated or critical infrastructure context, including security architecture review, data classification and the handling of personally identifiable and commercially sensitive data.
Delivery or program management certifications such as PMP, PRINCE2, SAFe or Agile equivalents, and AWS certification.

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.

About Cognizant
Cognizant (Nasdaq: CTSH) is an AI Builder and technology services provider, bridging the gap between AI investment and enterprise value by building full-stack AI solutions for our clients. Our deep industry, process and engineering expertise enables us to build an organization’s unique context into technology systems that amplify human potential, drive tangible outcomes and keep global enterprises ahead in a fast-changing world. See how at cognizant.ai or @cognizant.

Additional employment information
Compensation information is accurate as of the date of this posting. Cognizant reserves the right to modify this information at any time, subject to applicable law.

Applicants may be required to attend interviews in person or by video conference. In addition, candidates may be required to present their current state or government issued ID during each interview.

Cognizant is an equal opportunity employer. Your application and candidacy will not be considered based on race, color, sex, religion, creed, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, veteran status or any other characteristic protected by federal, provincial or local laws.