Engineering Lead-REMOTE

As an Engineering Lead supporting the client, you will provide technical leadership, people leadership, and general engineering oversight for Cognizant onshore engineering team members working across the client's initiatives. This role partners closely with the client's engineering leadership and Cognizant internal leadership to establish effective processes, execute delivery strategies, and ensure development work is completed with professionalism, high quality, and timeliness.

The Engineering Lead is accountable for guiding engineering teams, removing delivery obstacles, strengthening engineering practices, and ensuring alignment between Cognizant execution and the client's priorities. The role requires a strong combination of technical depth, delivery discipline, stakeholder communication, team development, and the ability to serve as a trusted advisor to both client and internal teams.

Key Responsibilities

• Serve as the engineering leader, technical expert, and primary liaison between the client's engineering leadership and Cognizant engineering associates.
• Partner with the client's leadership and Cognizant internal leadership to align engineering execution with the client's strategy, priorities, standards, and delivery expectations.
• Support recruiting, onboarding, training, and retention of strong engineering talent for the client's project teams.
• Monitor individual and team performance, provide coaching and mentoring, and help develop robust team capability and people performance.
• Identify staffing, training, and skill-development needs and partner with leadership to address gaps proactively.
• Provide day-to-day leadership, guidance, and support to engineering team members, including answering questions, resolving issues, and helping teams overcome technical or delivery challenges.
• Plan, design, oversee, and support engineering initiatives to ensure work is delivered on time, with high quality, and in alignment with agreed scope and expectations.
• Design, implement, and continuously refine engineering best practices, development standards, testing practices, deployment processes, and delivery procedures.
• Review and validate the accuracy, quality, and effectiveness of work performed by Cognizant engineering staff, including the methods, tools, and practices used to complete that work.
• Act as a technical advisor and sounding board on engineering topics, including appropriate use of AI tools, architecture decisions, development approaches, and process improvements.
• Collaborate with Product Managers, Scrum Masters, System Architects, engineering managers, client stakeholders, and cross-functional teams to support effective planning and delivery.
• Communicate clearly and professionally with managers, stakeholders, clients, and team members regarding status, risks, dependencies, decisions, and next steps.
• Maintain strong expertise in relevant engineering practices, technologies, platforms, and industry trends applicable to the client's work.
• Ensure engineering practices comply with applicable quality, security, safety, and governance expectations.

Required Qualifications

• Senior-level engineering leadership experience, preferably supporting enterprise client delivery or complex technology programs.
• Experience designing and implementing complex microservices systems.
• Proven ability to lead, mentor, coach, and develop engineering team members across multiple disciplines or workstreams.
• Strong project and delivery management experience, including planning, prioritization, risk management, dependency management, and status communication.
• Expert-level understanding of modern engineering practices, software delivery processes, testing approaches, deployment methods, and operational quality expectations.
• Strong strategic thinking skills with the ability to translate client priorities into actionable engineering plans and team execution.
• Excellent leadership, team-building, mentoring, and stakeholder management skills.
• Strong communication, interpersonal, facilitation, and conflict-resolution skills.
• Strong analytical, critical-thinking, and problem-solving skills.
• Self-motivated and comfortable managing multiple priorities in a timeline-driven, client-facing environment.
• Flexible and adaptable, with the ability to pivot, adjust plans, and try new approaches when faced with changing priorities or delivery challenges.
• Experience working in Agile delivery environments, especially Scrum-based teams.

Education and Experience

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, computer science, information technology, or a related technical field required.
• 15+ years of engineering or software delivery experience.
• 10+ years of experience in engineering leadership, technical leadership, people leadership, or delivery leadership roles.
• Proficiency in programming languages like Java, C#.
• Experience leading distributed, cross-functional, or client-facing engineering teams preferred.
• Master's degree in engineering management, business administration, computer science, or a related field preferred.