Engineering the Future of Modern Businesses: Why Cognizant Is An Engineer’s Playground
Engineering the Future of Modern Businesses: Why Cognizant Is An Engineer’s Playground
As the pace of technology continues to grow, change is always afoot for our clients at Cognizant – music to the ears of our enterprise engineering team! Nowadays, their roles are more creative than ever as they work to help clients embrace rapid shifts in the technological landscape and enable them to better anticipate changing customer preferences and needs.
We’re endlessly inspired by today’s competitive market, in which connected and agile systems and great customer experiences are imperatives for business success. Clients look to us for the solutions that will modernise their business, and they know we’ll deliver game-changing, exceptional experiences because we’re so excited by the possibilities. In fact, Shweta Dhankani - Architect - Technology, says she feels almost “indulged” by the opportunity to be one of our engineers. “Enterprise Engineering is so exciting. It gives one an opportunity to think, explore, discover, invent and create – and for me, being able to take on such a variety of challenges at Cognizant, and get deeply involved in design discussions, makes the work particularly satisfying.”
A shared passion for solving great challenges
Our driving principle is to innovate. We’re always accessing the depths of our creativity to achieve results that are in the very best interests of our clients. They’re our primary focus as we freely experiment with everything technology has to offer. It’s why people choose to work at Cognizant. This is an engineer’s playground.
John Solomon is a Cloud Solution Architect responsible for implementing full-stack solutions and deployment in cloud environments. He says that the technologies he’s been exposed to at Cognizant are second to none. “I have worked on so many amazing technologies here. Front-end, AI technologies, cloud platforms, AWS speciality services, graph databases, new coding languages, Go API gateways. I could list so many right off the top of my head, but I wouldn’t come anywhere close to covering it: React JS, PWD, Amazon web services, Ayehu EyeShare, Kotlin and Python, APIGEE Microservices Architecture – the list goes on.”
Jayasre Manchari Venkatesan Loganathan, a Solutions Architect and Full Stack Engineer, echoes John’s enthusiasm. “I’ve built my skill set considerably in my time here because of the diverse technology we’re working with. For example, I’ve worked a lot with serverless computing frameworks and Continuous Integration and Delivery tools from Atlassian that support my fully functional agile team — Bamboo, Bitbucket, SourceTree, Confluence, JIRA. I’ve also worked on projects using a Natural Language processing framework, big data analytics platforms, machine learning (for example, Hadoop), and open-source workflow and decision automation platforms like Camunda and Activii.”
Variety, challenge and continuous development
Put it this way – you’ll never feel stale with us. Our clients and projects are diverse. The experience we offer is far-reaching and dynamic. There’s constant challenge, constant learning and a constant requirement to think further and deeper that creates capabilities you’ll use for the rest of your life. As Shweta says: “Cognizant has given me so many opportunities to explore various technologies and to perform a variety of roles in the corporate world.”
We also facilitate deep learning with the belief that the best way to get better is to dive in. It’s the kind of place where you’re always developing your competencies while immersed in fascinating and impactful projects.
As project Subject Matter Expert, Jayasre provides technical architecture, works with the domain experts and product owners collecting the requirements, does feasibility checks and performs the technical discovery and design.
“I am also responsible for ensuring we follow standard engineering practices throughout the development phase,” she explains, “as well as being the first point of contact onshore for any reported incidents.”
“Over time, I’ve been able to slowly adapt to cloud infrastructure-based applications thanks to working on Pivotal Cloud Foundry, Microsoft Azure and AWS. This in turn helped me to obtain my external certification as a cloud architect.
In truth, there is just a constant influx of technology at Cognizant. Best of all, I’m given frequent opportunities to apply my new skills as quickly as I learn them. I’ve learned so much, so fast and as such, there’s always another door opening for me to progress even further. I’m not sure I would have been capable of this level of seniority at this stage were it not for the speed of learning available to me here.” John tells us more: “Engineers at Cognizant actually spend significant, designated time on direct learning, with immediate feedback given by supervisors. We also have fortnightly tech talks where engineers can share their designs, take pride in their work and give the rest of the team an opportunity to learn more outside of their own immediate scope.”
Beyond the purely technical
Jayasre and John both work on a combination of end-user facing and non end-user facing projects, leveraging the best tools in the market. They both say they’ve reached new professional heights thanks to stretch assignments and the unending opportunities for growth they’ve encountered.
Furthermore, they believe that one of the things that makes the work at Cognizant particularly interesting is our clients themselves.
Jayasre elaborates: “A project that stands out for me is my very first one for Cognizant, for an American company in our Information and Media Entertainment (IME) division. Despite limited knowledge of this domain at the time, I was the key developer. This company provides commercial analytics and insights for businesses, so as well as the vast learning I achieved from a technical point of view, it was so interesting to learn about the credibility check process for large firms.”
For John, a highlight has been leading an onshore team in the UK to enhance project security by using Security Frameworks and remediating security issues like SQL Injection, Stored XSS, and many more.
“The project gave me a far deeper understanding of an application from a customer point of view. I worked on a lot of performance tuning and monitoring activities. The existing methodologies were revisited and defined in a new line of attack, thereby enhancing the application’s reliability, availability and speed. I also pitched in new business proposals to identify new opportunities.”
Was it challenging? “Very,” says John. But did it set him up with skills he’s used ever since? “Absolutely. It was a challenging phase for me to stabilise the application, but ultimately, this project gave me a really strong base for my analytical skills. You see, adversity always leaves you with a gift!”
Making a real impact
As well as improving operations for clients, many projects we deliver pave the way for whole new ways of lean and agile working for everyone from big commercial businesses, to start-ups, to public organisations. “I’ve developed solutions that create ecosystems within businesses to build reusable products, rather than inevitably redundant applications,” John tells us.
Jayasre is proud of her current project in the telecommunications space, which promises to have hugely positive ramifications for the entire industry and subsequently, society at large: “Especially right now, after COVID and all the remote working that has been introduced, telecommunications play an increasingly major role in every industry, as well as every individual’s life.”
A transparent and honest culture where everyone can shine
There is a lot of space to share knowledge and grow at Cognizant. Our employees often note that they feel our leaders genuinely care about their goals.
“It is not a hierarchical corporate culture,” explains Jayasre, “but one where the leadership team emphasises values like collaboration, communication and trust and really help to shape careers. They ensure regular communication with all the teams, which keeps everyone engaged.” John agrees. “Everyone is encouraged here. Everyone has equal opportunities to become the best they can be in their chosen field. I really appreciate the constant support to upskill on the latest technologies, get certified in leading cloud services, regular knowledge sharing sessions, and the regular rotations among projects to let us expand our knowledge across different domains and tech stacks.”
“It is a very supportive and trusting culture,” Jayasre explains. “I always feel I belong here, and that I can grow here.”
We’re certainly a team that keeps on growing. Most importantly, we recognise that it’s our people who are our magic. It’s exciting to collaborate as one to solve some of our clients’ greatest challenges, and to witness the growth of our amazing talents as they continue to find new ways to innovate. There’s so much more to come for us!
Want to explore the exciting career in Software Engineering that could be waiting for you at Cognizant? Head to our website to learn more.
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