AI Customer Engineer III

About the role

As an AI Customer Engineer III in Cognizant's AI Market Unit, you will lead complex AI solution shaping and MVP delivery efforts while playing a central role in advancing strategic client opportunities. With deep technical expertise and strong executive presence, you will run ideation workshops, define end-to-end AI architectures, and own the development of compelling proposals that connect technical excellence to measurable business outcomes. Embedded in client environments, you will build trusted relationships with senior stakeholders, manage expectations across the engagement lifecycle, and ensure a well-orchestrated handoff to delivery and service line teams. You will also develop the engineers around you, building capability and quality across the AI Market Unit.

In this role, you will:

• Own the technical success of one or more strategic customer engagements, serving as primary technical authority across architecture, delivery quality, and client executive relationships.

• Define the client's agentic AI roadmap: identify high-value use cases, sequence the build, set success metrics, and tie outcomes to business impact — cost, revenue, risk, and speed.

• Architect enterprise-scale multi-agent systems including agent orchestration topology, inter-agent communication protocols, memory and state management at scale, fail-safe and escalation paths, and governance / audit layers.

• Drive build-vs-buy decisions, model selection, and platform choices with clear-eyed view of client constraints — security, compliance, data sovereignty, and existing tech stack.

• Establish evaluation and observability standards for the engagement: evals infrastructure, drift detection, model performance monitoring, agent behavior auditing, and rollback strategies.

• Represent Cognizant at CTO / CAIO-level discussions, translating complex AI system behavior into board-ready risk and value narratives.

• Partner with clients throughout MVP build and handoff, managing C-suite expectations, communicating progress with authority and clarity, and ensuring a comprehensive transition to delivery and service line teams.

• Identify repeatable deployment patterns across engagements and productize them as accelerators, reference architectures, and reusable agents within the AI Market Unit.

• Recruit, mentor, and develop FDE team members; raise the capability bar of the entire practice through internal tech talks, architecture reviews, and hands-on coaching.

Work model

We believe hybrid work is the way forward as we strive to provide flexibility wherever possible. Based on this role’s business requirements, this is a hybrid position requiring 2-3 days a week in a client or Cognizant office. Regardless of your working arrangement, we are here to support a healthy work-life balance though our various wellbeing programs.The working arrangements for this role are accurate as of the date of posting. This may change based on the project you’re engaged in, as well as business and client requirements. Rest assured; we will always be clear about role expectations.

What you need to have to be considered

• Overall experience: 10+ years.

• Technical Depth: Deep, still-current hands-on engineering — you architect and you build; you have not drifted into pure oversight. We will ask you to show recent work and go three levels deep on it.

• Agentic Frameworks: Deep expertise in at least two agentic frameworks; has extended or contributed to open-source AI tooling.

• Cloud Fluency: Multi-cloud depth across AWS Bedrock, Azure AI Foundry, and GCP Vertex AI; knows where each excels and fails.

• Delivery Ownership: Proven ability to own a full engagement or product from ambiguity to a deployed, value-creating outcome.

• Executive Presence: Can sit across from a CxO, be challenged, and hold the room on technical and business terms — credibility earned, not assumed.

• Judgment Under Ambiguity: Sound instincts on what to build, what to kill, and when to push back on a customer.

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These will help you stand out

• Track record of multiple successful GenAI / agentic AI production deployments at enterprise scale.

• Has built or scaled an engineering team — hiring, mentoring, technical career development.

• Has shaped product strategy — turned field learnings into platform features or accelerator IP.

• Demonstrated ability to navigate organizational resistance and drive AI adoption across large enterprises.

• Domain depth in financial services, healthcare, supply chain, retail, or manufacturing.

Technical Skills & Tools

• Agentic Frameworks: Deep expertise in at least two frameworks (LangGraph, AutoGen, CrewAI, Semantic Kernel, or equivalent); has extended or contributed to open-source AI tooling; designs enterprise-scale multi-agent orchestration topology.

• Cloud Platforms: Multi-cloud fluency across AWS Bedrock, Azure AI Foundry, and GCP Vertex AI; knows where each excels and fails; drives platform selection and model routing decisions.

• Advanced AI Engineering: Fine-tuning, RLHF, and model adaptation strategies for enterprise domains; distributed systems fundamentals for agent systems under load, partial failure, and adversarial inputs.

• AI Security & Red-Teaming: Prompt injection, jailbreaks, data leakage vectors, and mitigations; enterprise IAM, data residency, and compliance (SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI).

• LLMOps — Eval & Observability: Establishes evals infrastructure, drift detection, model performance monitoring, agent behavior auditing, and rollback strategies for the engagement; owns the observability standard.

• Responsible AI & Governance: Sets Responsible AI standards aligned to NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001, EU AI Act, and sector-specific compliance; embeds governance and audit layers into architecture.

• Emerging-Tech Radar: Actively evaluates new frameworks, models, and platforms; guides the team on when to adopt, trial, or hold.

Salary and Other Compensation:

The annual salary for this position is between $117,000 -$210,000 depending on experience and other qualifications of the successful candidate. This position is eligible for Cognizant’s discretionary annual incentive program, based on performance and subject to the terms of Cognizant’s applicable plans.

Benefits

This position is also eligible for Cognizant’s discretionary annual incentive program and stock awards, based on performance and subject to the terms of Cognizant’s applicable plans.

Benefits: Cognizant offers the following benefits for this position, subject to apply

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, based on applicable law.

Work Authorization

Must be legally authorized to work in the United States without the need for employer sponsorship, now or any time in the future.

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.

Language requirements vary depending on roles, but we ask that all candidates have basic English proficiency for company-wide communications purposes. For roles based in Quebec, professional English proficiency is required, as you’ll deliver services to and collaborate with stakeholders outside the province who may not speak French.

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, provincial 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.