Skill: Senior Architect- AI
Exp: 13 to 18 years
Location: Hyderabad
Shift: Night Shift
The Senior Architect in Delivery leads architecture and technical direction for multi-team Azure programs across applications, platforms, and data. You connect client goals to scalable designs, guide delivery across teams, and shape modernization work so it delivers measurable results.
At this level, you influence architecture beyond a single project. You set direction across engagements, work with business and technology leaders, raise the bar on delivery quality, and promote reusable patterns. You mentor architects and senior engineers, support strategic pursuits, and turn working solutions into repeatable delivery models.
Responsibilities
Solution Architecture and Technical Leadership
· Lead architecture and technical strategy for Azure modernization and transformation programs that span multiple teams and workstreams.
· Translate client goals into scalable designs that align with business priorities, non-functional requirements, delivery constraints, and program-level outcomes.
· Drive architecture across teams so designs follow shared models, standards, and patterns.
· Collaborate with architects and engineers in other domains to integrate solutions and maintain a cohesive end-to-end architecture.
· Provide ongoing architectural guidance during implementation, including reviews of key designs and code, and define patterns and guardrails that teams can reuse.
· Apply solid engineering practices in your primary domain—modular design, clear interfaces, testability, and observability—so solutions remain robust and maintainable.
· Use AI-assisted tooling to accelerate design, code, tests, documentation, and analysis, and help teams adopt effective practices at program scale.
Delivery and Consulting Excellence
· Lead or co-lead discovery and roadmap work for programs or large workstreams, turning inputs into integrated, testable backlogs with clear non-functional requirements and dependencies.
· Use structured problem solving to clarify scope, dependencies, and risks at program scale, and explain options in terms of value, cost, risk, and time-to-impact.
· Communicate architecture strategy and decisions clearly to technical and non-technical audiences, including executives.
· Build trusted relationships with product, engineering, and technology leaders, and help shape modernization roadmaps in the client’s best interest.
· Provide architecture oversight so designs, interfaces, and integration points support predictable delivery and stable team velocity.
· Align multiple teams on shared outcomes, contracts, and integration points, ensuring dependencies are identified, owned, and tracked through to delivery.
· Help define delivery approaches, working agreements, and documentation practices that keep 3Cloud and client teams aligned across locations and time zones.
· Support effective use of Agile at scale by ensuring architecture and backlog structure enable incremental delivery, clear definitions of done, and data-informed adjustments based on telemetry and feedback.
· Apply a consulting mindset by anticipating client needs, proposing options, and tying solutions to clear results and adoption, and handle challenge and pushback by explaining trade-offs in simple, direct language.
· Demonstrated ability to leverage AI and emerging technologies to improve productivity, enhance decision-making, streamline delivery processes, and drive measurable business value. Commitment to continuous learning and adoption of new digital capabilities is required.
· Proven success operating within large, matrixed consulting organizations and navigating the scale, complexity, governance, and pace of a Global System Integrator (GSI) environment. Ability to manage competing priorities, collaborate across cross-functional teams, and consistently deliver results in a fast-paced, performance-driven setting.
Mentorship and Team Development
· Mentor architects, senior engineers, and technical leads, building their design skills, architectural judgment, and ability to work effectively across systems and teams.
· Provide architectural oversight across teams or workstreams, modeling pragmatic decision-making and showing when to keep solutions simple and when new patterns or technologies are justified.
· Support hiring and growth by participating in technical interviews, calibration discussions, and mentorship, and by helping shape development plans for future architects.
· Growth and Innovation
· Contribute to business development by identifying opportunities beyond the current assignment across all our capabilities and assisting the sales director in pursuing them.
· Intentionally builds relationship networks within client accounts to deepen partnership and identify opportunities to provide additional business value.
· Partner with sales and account leaders on strategic pursuits by setting the technical vision, contributing to solution strategy, and participating in client workshops, demos, and roadmap sessions.
· Create solution options, high-level designs, and estimates for programs, clearly documenting assumptions, dependencies, and risks and tying them back to business value and risk reduction.
· Build and evolve reusable assets—such as reference architectures, runbooks, workshops, starter repositories, and templates—that become standard paths for delivery teams.
· Champion adoption of modern frameworks, patterns, platform capabilities, automation, and AI-assisted tools that improve quality, speed, or reliability in a safe and secure way.
· Actively participate in enablement initiatives, share lessons from complex engagements, and help build a culture of collaboration, continuous improvement, and knowledge sharing.
Requirements
· 10+ years of experience delivering solutions in a primary technical domain.
· 5+ years of experience in solution architecture and leading development or engineering teams, including multi-team or multi-workstream efforts.
· Deep expertise across most of the following:
· Agents & Orchestration – leveraging Semantic Kernel, LangChain, or similar frameworks to design intelligent workflows; applying tool/function calling, planner and agent-based patterns, and workflow automation engines.
· Search & Retrieval – implementing solutions with vector databases such as Azure AI Search, Pinecone, FAISS, or Milvus; applying hybrid search methods, re-ranking strategies, and selecting embedding models for accuracy and performance.
· Evaluation, Quality & LLM Operations – establishing offline and online evaluation approaches; using golden datasets, hallucination and groundedness validation, toxicity and safety testing; building telemetry and feedback loops; managing monitoring, deployment pipelines, and ongoing optimization of large language models.
· Responsible AI, Security & Privacy – incorporating practices such as threat modeling, privacy reviews, data minimization, safety guardrails, policy enforcement, auditability, and model risk management in line with GDPR and organizational standards.
· AI Platforms & Data Foundations – applying hands-on experience with Azure AI services, Databricks, Azure OpenAI, and related modern data platforms.
· Cloud Engineering – designing with APIs, containers, microservices, and DevOps pipelines to deliver scalable, cloud-native solutions.
· Data Integration & Governance – developing and managing data pipelines; applying quality controls, metadata practices, and master data management approaches.
· Analytics & Visualization – delivering insights with Power BI and other visualization tools.
· Proficiency with modern development tools (e.g., GitHub, Copilot, Cursor).
· Knowledge of analytics and data science tools, frameworks, and advanced techniques.
· Relevant Azure or Databricks certifications in AI, Data, or Architecture.
· Proven experience leading architecture and delivery for Azure-based solutions such as modernizations, transformations, or platform build-outs.
· Ability to define solution architectures that connect business goals to scalable technical designs and solid delivery practices.
· Experience leading hybrid and remote teams and maintaining alignment, quality, and predictable delivery across time zones.
· Deep knowledge of core concepts, languages, frameworks, and design patterns in your primary domain, with the ability to apply them at program scale.
· Experience using AI-augmented development and integrating AI or machine learning capabilities into solutions using APIs, frameworks, or cloud-based AI services.
· Experience with Agile or Scrum at scale, including backlog management, work slicing, and dependency handling.
· Experience in consulting or professional services.
· Familiarity with key Azure services relevant to your domain, such as messaging, compute, data, security, networking, and integration.
· Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with clear written and verbal communication.
· Demonstrated interest in learning new cloud technologies and turning that learning into practical improvements for teams.
· Ability to stay hands-on with architecture and, when needed, implementation while guiding complex cloud solutions across teams.
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, state or local laws.
