Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Cognizant is a leading technology company, and they are seeking an Associate Director for the role of Agentic AI Frontier Engineer. This position involves leading the architecture, design, and engineering of AI solutions for enterprise clients, focusing on creating scalable and responsible AI systems that integrate autonomous decision-making and human oversight.
Responsibilities
- Architect multi-agent systems capable of autonomous task planning, execution, reflection, and escalation within defined harnesses and guardrails
- Design end-to-end Agentic & Gen AI architectures, including LLM selection, agent orchestration, memory, tools, and human oversight mechanisms
- Define architectures covering data ingestion, vector stores, prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), agent workflows, APIs, and integration layers
- Embed Responsible AI principles including fairness, explainability, transparency, human oversight, blast radius, and kill-switch mechanisms
- Ensure compliance with AI governance standards, enterprise security policies, and regulatory frameworks
- Guide teams on agent behaviour constraints, risk mitigation, and outcome monitoring
- Translate business use cases into AI solution blueprints, reference architectures, and implementation roadmaps
- Support pre-sales, RFPs, solutioning, and deal credentialization by articulating Agentic AI value propositions
- Provide technical leadership to delivery teams across PoCs, pilots, and production deployments
- Stay current with Generative AI, Agentic AI frameworks, LLM advancements, and industry trends
- Contribute to internal accelerators, reusable assets, and best practices
- Mentor architects and engineering teams on GenAI and agent-based system design
Skills
- 10+ years of experience in enterprise architecture, frontier engineering, AI engineering, or related technology leadership roles, with recent focus on Generative AI and Agentic AI
- Hands-on knowledge of large language models, prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, vector databases, agentic workflows, and agent orchestration frameworks
- Experience designing AI, machine learning, or GenAI systems on hyperscaler platforms such as Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, or Amazon Web Services
- Strong understanding of API-driven architectures, microservices, event-driven systems, cloud-native platforms, containers, orchestration, MLOps, and LLMOps
- Ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly to business, technical, and executive audiences in client-facing or consulting environments
- Master's degree or Doctor of Philosophy degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related STEM field
- Evidence of technical thought leadership, such as patents, technical publications, professional portfolio, peer recognition, or similar contributions
- Experience with agentic AI governance frameworks, autonomous system controls, responsible AI practices, and outcome monitoring
- Exposure to industry-specific Generative AI use cases across communications, media, technology, banking, financial services, healthcare, retail, manufacturing, or similar domains
- Contributions to AI platforms, internal accelerators, reusable assets, or best practices that help scale enterprise AI adoption
Benefits
- Cognizant’s discretionary annual incentive program, based on performance and subject to the terms of Cognizant’s applicable plans.
- 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
Company Overview