{"id":3352418,"url":"https://alion.io/job/cognizant-principal-ai-platform-engineer-onsite","title":"Principal AI Platform Engineer - Onsite","company":{"id":85,"name":"Cognizant","domain":"cognizant.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/cognizant","size_band":"5000+","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"services","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Cognizant Careers","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":90,"open_postings":152,"ghost_share":0.013,"stale_share":0.539,"repost_share":0.039,"time_to_fill_p50_days":21,"computed_at":"2026-10-28T05:59:10Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Leandro, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":120000,"max":180000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":180000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":10,"visa_sponsorship":true,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"ASP.NET Core","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"Azure","optional":false},{"name":"C#","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"Digital Twin","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":false},{"name":"Platform Engineering","optional":false},{"name":"RAG","optional":false},{"name":"Rest API","optional":false},{"name":"Time Series","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-27T10:40:39Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-27","last_verified_at":"2026-10-28T09:20:04Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":1,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":1},"description":"*Please note, this role is not able to offer visa transfer or sponsorship now or in the future*\nAbout Us:\nCognizant is one of the world's leading professional services companies, transforming clients' business, operating, and technology models for the digital era. Our unique industry-based, consultative approach helps clients envision, build, and run more innovative and efficient businesses. Headquartered in the U.S., Cognizant, a member of the NASDAQ-100, is ranked 195 on the Fortune 500 and is consistently listed among the most admired companies in the world. Learn how Cognizant helps clients lead with digital at www.cognizant.com.\nAbout Cognizant’s IoT Practice:\nIntelligent, IoT-enabled products will soon result in the proliferation of data and disrupt virtually all industries. To be successful, both large and small companies must leverage IoT capabilities by designing modern products that fundamentally connect people with processes. Within Cognizant IOT, we engineer industry-aligned, IoT-enabled products that merge industry needs with human drivers. Our intelligent products will revolutionize experiences and result in exciting, transformative outcomes. Without human-centered thinking, connected products are just standalone things-but with it, our modern connected products facilitate a unified way of life enjoyed by all.\nPrincipal AI Platform Engineer\nApplied AI | Cloud Platforms | Industrial Software | Multicloud Engineering\nLevel: Principal / Senior Individual Contributor\nFocus: Hands-on Engineering & Technical Leadership\nThe Opportunity\nWe are seeking a Principal AI Platform Engineer to design and deliver enterprise-scale AI and cloud platform solutions. This is a highly hands-on technical leadership role combining Applied AI, Generative AI, cloud-native engineering, distributed systems, Azure/AWS, and industrial software.\nYou will work closely with Product, R&D, Architecture, Cloud Operations, and customer-facing teams to build secure, scalable, reusable, and production-ready solutions.\nKey Responsibilities\nDesign and build AI-enabled services, APIs, connectors, libraries, automation, and reusable platform components.\nDevelop production AI solutions using LLMs, Generative AI, RAG, AI agents, orchestration, vector search, grounding, evaluation, safety, monitoring, and cost optimization.\nArchitect cloud-native solutions using C#, .NET, ASP.NET Core, REST APIs, microservices, containers, Kubernetes, serverless, and event-driven architectures.\nEngineer enterprise platforms across Microsoft Azure and AWS, including identity, data, messaging, API management, observability, Infrastructure as Code, and CI/CD.\nDesign and execute cloud migrations and Azure-to-AWS migration strategies, including networking, data movement, portability, resilience, cutover, and rollback.\nTroubleshoot complex production issues involving performance, scalability, reliability, latency, security, and compliance.\nBuild solutions involving industrial/OT data, time-series data, historians, SCADA, MES, ERP/EAM, digital twins, and edge-to-cloud integration.\nUse AI-assisted engineering for code modernization, refactoring, migration, performance analysis, testing, and developer productivity.\nProvide technical leadership, influence architecture decisions, mentor engineers, and establish strong engineering practices.\nRequired Experience\nTypically 10-15 years of relevant software engineering, AI, cloud/platform engineering, distributed systems, or industrial software experience.\nStrong hands-on expertise in Applied AI and Generative AI, including production implementation of LLMs, RAG, agents, vector search, evaluation, grounding, safety, monitoring, latency, and cost management.\nStrong backend engineering experience with C#, .NET, ASP.NET Core, APIs, microservices, containers, and Kubernetes.\nAdvanced hands-on experience across Azure and AWS, including compute, Kubernetes/containers, serverless, databases, storage, messaging, identity, secrets management, API management, monitoring, CI/CD, and Infrastructure as Code.\nExperience with multicloud architecture and cloud migration, preferably including Azure-to-AWS migrations.\nUnderstanding of industrial environments such as SCADA/OT, historians, MES, time-series data, ERP/EAM, digital twins, and edge/cloud integration.\nStrong understanding of secure software engineering, testing, observability, deployment, scalability, performance, release readiness, and production support.\nAbility to provide technical leadership and influence engineering teams without requiring direct people-management responsibility.\nHighly Desirable\nExperience designing and operating agentic AI systems that automate SDLC activities such as requirements analysis, coding, code review, testing, dependency upgrades, and release preparation.\nExperience integrating AI agents with source control, CI/CD, and engineering tools, including human approval gates, scoped permissions, auditability, and security controls.\nExperience deploying AI solutions in regulated, high-availability, industrial, or mission-critical environments.\nWhat Success Looks Like\nYou will deliver secure, production-ready AI capabilities and reusable platform solutions while improving cloud portability, developer productivity, application performance, reliability, and customer value.\nThis is a Principal-level technical leadership role for someone who remains deeply hands-on. It is not primarily a people-management position.\nCompensation: - $120,000 to $180,000 + 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. Application will be accepted by 11/27/2026\nBenefits: Cognizant offers the following benefits for this position, subject to applicable eligibility requirements:\nMedical/Dental/Vision/Life Insurance\nPaid holidays plus Paid Time Off\n401(k) plan and contributions\nLong-term/Short-term Disability\nPaid Parental Leave\nEmployee Stock Purchase Plan","description_format":"text","description_chars":6012,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":10,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Life insurance","Parental leave"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["IT Consulting & Digital Transformation","IT Outsourcing & Dedicated Teams","Engineering Services","Cloud Consulting & Migration"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-27T19:00:54Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":63,"band":"ok","label":"Likely open","p_open":1,"p_active":0.632,"p_room":1,"age_days":0,"expected_fill_days":21,"reasons":["conf:1","stale_co","velocity","win:early","comp:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-28T05:59:10Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":180000,"is_top_pay":false},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/cognizant-principal-ai-platform-engineer-onsite","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/cognizant-principal-ai-platform-engineer-onsite.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-28T11:20:58Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":14798,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-29T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":85},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=85"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fcognizant-principal-ai-platform-engineer-onsite"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fcognizant-principal-ai-platform-engineer-onsite"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fcognizant-principal-ai-platform-engineer-onsite"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/cognizant-principal-ai-platform-engineer-onsite\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fcognizant-principal-ai-platform-engineer-onsite"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3352418}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"cognizant.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3352418},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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