Role Summary
The Associate Director – Data Engineering is a senior leadership role responsible for acting as the Delivery Leader across a portfolio of client accounts, ensuring consistent, high-quality program delivery through strong collaboration with offshore leads and teams. In parallel, this role owns the P&L for the account portfolio and drives proposal development and opportunity conversion, translating sales pipeline into executable, well-scoped delivery engagements.
This is a dual-mandate role: delivery excellence is the first and non-negotiable priority, while P&L ownership and business development (proposals/opportunity conversion) is the secondary priority, to be managed without compromising delivery commitments.
Roles & Responsibilities
1. Delivery Leadership
- Serve as the primary delivery owner and escalation point for all in-flight programs within the assigned account portfolio.
- Partner with offshore leads/managers to plan sprints/releases, allocate resources, and track execution against milestones.
- Drive daily/weekly delivery governance cadences (stand-ups, steering committees, status reviews) with onshore and offshore teams.
- Proactively identify delivery risks (technical debt, resourcing gaps, scope creep, attrition) and drive mitigation plans.
- Ensure adherence to engineering best practices, data quality standards, architecture guidelines, and DevOps/DataOps processes across teams.
- Own client relationship management at the program level — building trust, managing expectations, and ensuring high CSAT (Client Satisfaction) scores.
- Conduct periodic program health checks and quality audits across accounts.
- Mentor and develop offshore leads and technical managers to strengthen delivery capability and reduce dependency on escalations.
- Ensure knowledge continuity and succession planning within delivery teams.
- Manage cross-functional dependencies (infrastructure, security, data governance, QA) required for successful delivery.
2. P&L Ownership
- Own and manage the P&L for the assigned set of accounts, including revenue recognition, cost management, and margin improvement.
- Track utilization, billability, and pyramid health of the delivery teams; drive corrective actions where needed.
- Forecast resourcing and financial requirements in line with account growth plans.
- Identify cost optimization opportunities (offshore-onshore mix, automation, tooling) without compromising delivery quality.
- Report account financial performance to leadership on a periodic basis.
3. Proposals & Opportunity Conversion
- Partner with sales, account management, and pre-sales teams to identify and shape new opportunities within existing and prospective accounts.
- Lead or contribute to solutioning, effort estimation, staffing plans, and commercial proposals for new deals or account expansions (RFP/RFI responses, SOWs).
- Ensure proposed solutions are technically sound, deliverable, and aligned with realistic timelines and offshore delivery capability.
- Support due diligence, client presentations, and negotiations during the opportunity-to-contract transition.
- Ensure a smooth handover from the proposal/sales stage to the delivery team, including transfer of context, assumptions, and commitments made.
4. Stakeholder & Team Management
- Act as the bridge between onshore leadership/clients and offshore delivery teams, ensuring alignment of priorities and expectations.
- Build and maintain strong working relationships with client stakeholders, sponsors, and internal cross-functional leaders.
- Drive a culture of ownership, accountability, and continuous improvement within offshore and onshore teams.
- Support hiring, onboarding, and capability-building initiatives for the account's delivery teams.
Required Skills & Experience
- 16+ years of overall experience in Data Engineering / Data Platform delivery / AIML, Databricks with at least 3–5 years in a delivery leadership or account management role.
- Proven experience managing multi-account or multi-program portfolios with distributed (onshore-offshore) delivery models.
- Strong technical grounding in data engineering concepts — data pipelines, ETL/ELT, data warehousing, cloud data platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP), big data ecosystems (Spark, Kafka, etc.), and modern data architecture (Lakehouse, Data Mesh).
- Demonstrated experience owning P&L for accounts/programs, including revenue, margin, and utilization management.
- Experience in proposal writing, solutioning, and effort estimation for RFP/RFI responses.
- Strong stakeholder management skills — ability to engage confidently with client leadership, sponsors, and internal executives.
- Excellent people leadership skills, with experience managing and mentoring offshore leads/managers.
- Strong communication, negotiation, and executive presentation skills.
- Bachelor's/master’s degree in computer science, Engineering, or related field
*Please note this role is not able to offer visa transfer or sponsorship now or in the future*
We're excited to meet people who share our mission and who can make an impact in a variety of ways. Don't hesitate to apply—even if you only meet the minimum requirements. Think about your transferable experiences and unique skills that make you stand out.
Salary and Other Compensation:
Applications will be accepted until Aug 97, 2026,
The annual salary for this position is between $ 90,000 - $ 180,000 depending on experience and other qualifications of the successful candidate.
This position is also eligible for Cognizant’s discretionary annual incentive program, based on performance and subject to the terms of Cognizant’s applicable plans.
Benefits: Cognizant offers the following benefits for this position, subject to applicable eligibility requirements:
- Medical/Dental/Vision/Life Insurance
- Paid holidays plus Paid Time Off
- 401(k) plan and contributions
- Long-term/Short-term Disability
- Paid Parental Leave
- Employee Stock Purchase Plan
Disclaimer: The salary, other compensation, and benefits 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.
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.
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.
