Manager - IT Vendor Management

About Cognizant Corporate

Cognizant Corporate is a global community united by a shared purpose: to make a meaningful impact. We are committed to excellence and driven by outcomes that matter. Collaboration is at the heart of how we work, and our forward-thinking mindset fuels continuous learning, innovation, and growth.

At Cognizant, careers transcend titles. We empower our people to think strategically, inspire others, and lead with purpose, always guided by our core values. Join us in shaping the future of business. Could you be the one to make a difference?

About the role

As an ITVMO Demand, Licensing & Compliance professional, you will support enterprise technology demand management, software asset governance, license compliance, and decision intelligence. You will maintain an accurate view of software demand, entitlements, consumption, renewals, and licensing metrics across the technology portfolio.

You will work across business and technology teams and partner with application owners, architecture, cybersecurity, infrastructure, finance, legal, risk, and other stakeholders. You will bring a detail-oriented, analytical, and customer-service-focused approach, translating complex licensing, usage, compliance, and technology information into clear business insights and actionable recommendations.

In this role, you will:

• Lead enterprise software demand management, including intake, validation, prioritization, forecasting, and ongoing tracking. Validate requests against inventory, existing entitlements, approved standards, usage, budgets, and technology roadmaps, and recommend appropriate fulfilment paths.
• Interpret publisher-specific licensing rules and metrics and perform effective license position and compliance reviews. Reconcile entitlement, deployment, allocation, inventory, and usage data to identify compliance exposure, over-deployment, underutilization, duplicate capabilities, and optimization opportunities.
• Manage renewal and subscription timelines and support budget planning through forecasts, consumption, allocations, accruals, variance analysis, and financial exposure. Develop dashboards and management reports covering demand, utilization, compliance, renewals, product rationalization, technology spend, and operational performance.
• Apply AI-enabled analytics and automation to forecasting, anomaly detection, license optimization, compliance monitoring, renewal readiness, workflows, stakeholder notifications, and reporting. Define, test, deploy, monitor, and continuously improve AI agents with human oversight, access controls, data privacy, decision traceability, accuracy measures, and exception escalation.
• Lead and develop team members, establish operating rhythms and performance measures, maintain data quality and audit-ready controls, research software and licensing trends, partner with cross-functional stakeholders, and drive software standardization, catalog governance, application rationalization, and continuous improvement.

Embrace our vibrant culture by striving for excellence, focusing on meaningful outcomes, and collaborating effectively. Prioritize quality, stay curious, and commit to continuous learning. Take ownership, build relationships, and focus on personal growth to drive business strategy and create unmatched career opportunities and impactful work.

What you must have to be considered

• A bachelor’s degree in business, information systems, computer science, finance, analytics, or a related discipline.
• 9-12 years of experience in IT vendor management, software asset management, technology demand management, license compliance, IT governance, or a related function.
• Demonstrated experience leading teams or workstreams, including goal setting, workload prioritization, coaching, performance management, conflict resolution, and delivery accountability.
• Strong understanding of software licensing models, entitlement records, deployment and usage data, subscriptions, cloud consumption, and infrastructure-related licensing concepts.
• Experience with software asset management, configuration management, IT service management, inventory, reporting, or business intelligence platforms.
• Ability to analyze large and varied data sets, reconcile records, identify trends, financial exposure, risks, and control gaps, and present decision-ready insights.
• Experience with technology spend analytics, budget planning, forecasting, allocation, variance analysis, financial modeling, and executive-level reporting.
• Practical knowledge of AI-enabled analytics, intelligent automation, and the AI-agent lifecycle, including use-case definition, workflow design, testing, deployment, governance, monitoring, and adoption.
• Knowledge of audit readiness, evidence management, data governance, policy compliance, risk assessment, and remediation tracking.
• Excellent leadership, customer service, critical thinking, decision-making, organizational, stakeholder-management, and verbal and written communication skills, including the ability to explain complex concepts to senior leaders and non-technical audiences.
• A strong sense of ownership, desire to create meaningful outcomes, and passion for work that serves a greater good for customers, communities, or global challenges.
• Embodiment of Cognizant’s Values: Work as One, Dare to Innovate, Raise the Bar, Do The Right Thing, and Own It.

These will help you succeed

• Strong analytical capabilities and an ability to turn complex licensing, technology, financial, and compliance data into concise recommendations.
• Experience collaborating across technology, finance, legal, risk, cybersecurity, architecture, and business functions.
• An ability to balance strategic priorities with detailed operational execution.
• A continuous-improvement mindset and an interest in applying AI and automation to technology governance and asset-management processes.
• Strong communication and stakeholder-management capabilities, particularly when presenting complex information to leadership and non-technical audiences.

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 3 days a week in a Cognizant office. Regardless of your working arrangement, we are here to support a healthy work-life balance through our various wellbeing programs. The hybrid wording and structure follow the corporate template.

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.

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.