Agentic AI Frontier Engineer - Associate Director - 68938091

About the role

As an Agentic AI Frontier Engineer, you’ll lead the end-to-end architecture, design, and engineering of Agentic and Generative AI solutions for enterprise clients - turning complex business problems into scalable, secure, and responsible AI architecture built on LLMs, multi-agent systems, orchestration frameworks, and cloud-native platforms.

This high-visibility role sits at the center of Cognizant’s three-vector AI strategy: unlocking productivity, scaling AI adoption from pilots to enterprise-wide impact, and leading agent-led transformation. You’ll help shape how large enterprises move beyond experimentation to build, deploy, and govern intelligent systems at scale.

In this role, you’ll partner with business stakeholders, product owners, data scientists, engineers, and security teams to embed autonomous decision-making, human-in-the-loop controls, and Responsible AI principles across the solution lifecycle.

In this role, you will:

Agentic & Gen AI Frontier Engineers

• 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

Responsible & Ethical AI

• 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

Delivery & Stakeholder Engagement

• 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

Thought Leadership & Innovation

• 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

Work model

We strive to provide flexibility wherever possible. Based on this role’s business requirements, this is a remote position open to qualified applicants in the United States. Regardless of your working arrangement, we support a healthy work-life balance through our 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

• 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.

These will help you stand out

• 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.

We’re excited to meet people who share our mission and can make an impact in a variety of ways. Don’t hesitate to apply, even if you only meet the minimum requirements listed. Think about your transferable experiences and unique skills that make you stand out as someone who can bring new and exciting things to this role.

Salary And Other Compensation

Cognizant will only consider applicants for this position who are legally authorized to work in the United States without company sponsorship.

· Please note, this role is not able to offer visa transfer or sponsorship now or in the future*

The annual salary for this position will be in the range of $185,000 - $ 200,000 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