Leading at Cognizant
This is a Leadership role at Cognizant. We believe how you lead is as important as what you deliver. Cognizant leaders at every level drive business strategy, inspire teams around our future, live leadership behaviors, uphold our values in every action and decision, and nurture a high‑performance culture.
At Cognizant, leadership transcends titles and is embodied in actions and behaviors. Leaders are expected to drive strategy, inspire teams, uphold values, and create an environment focused on execution, accountability, and results.
About the role
As a Technology Leader, you will make an impact by setting and executing the engineering vision, leading large‑scale product engineering teams, and delivering modern, cloud‑native, customer‑facing platforms and products with predictable outcomes. You will be a valued member of the engineering leadership team and work collaboratively with senior stakeholders across product, architecture, quality, security, and operations.
In this role, you will:
- Set and communicate a clear engineering vision and strategy aligned to measurable business and customer outcomes
- Own product‑led delivery end‑to‑end, from discovery and planning through build, release, and live operations
- Lead architecture and technical governance, making key design decisions and trade‑offs, including build vs buy
- Raise the bar for engineering excellence across code quality, testing, observability, reliability, and reusability
- Drive the use of AI to improve engineering productivity and deliver AI‑enabled capabilities with appropriate security guardrails
- Own reliability, security, and operational readiness with DevSecOps embedded into delivery
- Build and lead high‑performing engineering organizations through hiring, onboarding, coaching, mentorship, and performance management
- Partner with product, design, architecture, and quality leadership to manage dependencies, remove blockers, and ensure effective governance
- Bring commercial and financial discipline through budgeting, cost management, value realization, and contribution to business outcomes
Consistently demonstrate the Cognizant Way to Lead by operating with strong personal leadership, organizational leadership, and business leadership, while driving accountability, execution, and results.
What you need to have to be considered
- 15+ years of experience building and leading modern product engineering teams, including 5+ years in senior technology leadership roles
- Proven experience leading large, multi‑team, distributed engineering organizations through managers
- Strong background across software architecture, development, quality engineering, security, and operations
- Executive‑level stakeholder management, including influencing without authority and managing complex trade‑offs
- Deep understanding of cloud‑native architecture and platforms, including AWS and observability practices
- Experience embedding application security practices such as threat modeling and automated security testing
- Strong agile and product engineering mindset with outcome‑driven delivery and measurable value creation
- Demonstrated commercial and financial acumen, including budgeting, cost management, and value realization
- Embodiment of the Cognizant Way to Lead: Leading Self, Leading Others, and Leading the Business
- Alignment with Cognizant values: Work as One, Dare to Innovate, Raise the Bar, Do the Right Thing, and Own It
These will help you succeed
- Experience with platform engineering and developer experience initiatives
- Exposure to real user monitoring and digital experience optimization
- Knowledge of SRE practices, SLAs, and incident management
- Experience with portfolio or program‑level delivery across multiple teams
- Understanding of FinOps and cloud cost optimization
- Familiarity with responsible AI delivery practices and guardrails
Work model
At Cognizant, we strive to provide flexibility wherever possible and support a healthy work‑life balance through our wellbeing programs. Based on this role’s business requirements, this is an onsite position requiring presence in a Cognizant office. Working arrangements are accurate as of the date of posting and may change based on project and business needs.
About us
Cognizant (Nasdaq: CTSH) is an AI Builder and technology services provider, building the bridge 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, realize tangible returns and keep global enterprises ahead in a fast-changing world. See how at www.cognizant.com 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.
If you have a disability that requires reasonable accommodation to search for a job opening or submit an application, please email [email protected] with your request and contact information.
