{"id":2163571,"url":"https://alion.io/job/cognizant-staff-ai-customer-engineer","title":"Staff AI Customer Engineer","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":88,"open_postings":128,"ghost_share":0.008,"stale_share":0.672,"repost_share":0.008,"time_to_fill_p50_days":20,"computed_at":"2026-10-25T05:49:26Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"staff","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"explicit","locations":["Seattle, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":130000,"max":230000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":230000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":8,"visa_sponsorship":true,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Arize Phoenix","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"AWS Bedrock","optional":false},{"name":"Azure","optional":false},{"name":"Braintrust","optional":false},{"name":"CrewAI","optional":false},{"name":"EU AI Act","optional":false},{"name":"HIPAA","optional":false},{"name":"Human-in-the-Loop","optional":false},{"name":"ISO 42001","optional":false},{"name":"Langfuse","optional":false},{"name":"LangGraph","optional":false},{"name":"LangSmith","optional":false},{"name":"LLMOps","optional":false},{"name":"NIST AI RMF","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"RAG","optional":false},{"name":"Rest-Assured","optional":false},{"name":"SOC 2","optional":false},{"name":"Vertex AI","optional":false},{"name":"LangChain","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-06-22T15:04:15Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-09","last_verified_at":"2026-10-26T01:36:48Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":125,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":124},"description":"Staff AI Customer Engineer (Associate Director)\nAbout the role\nAs a Staff AI Customer Engineer in Cognizant's AI Market Unit, you will lead client discovery, solution shaping, and AI-driven opportunity development that helps organizations realize tangible business value from generative AI and advanced AI. Embedded with our most strategic clients, you will operate as a trusted technical advisor and emerging thought leader-commanding the room with senior executives, shaping end-to-end AI architectures, and driving complex engagements from initial conversation through MVP delivery and handoff. You will bring strong executive presence to every client interaction, orchestrate cross-functional teams, and actively develop the practitioners around you. This role sits at the frontier of enterprise AI delivery and demands high agency, technical depth, and the credibility to influence at the most senior levels of client organizations.\n.\nIn this role, you will:\nLead early-stage discovery and art-of-the-possible ideation sessions engaging CxO and senior executive audiences with authority and confidence to frame high-value AI opportunities.\nEmbed with strategic clients to build production-ready AI applications owning the end-to-end engineering lifecycle from prototype through deployment.\nShape end-to-end AI solution architectures defining agentic platforms, data pipelines, ML components, integration patterns, and partner technologies.\nBuild and sustain trusted executive relationships serving as the senior client-facing voice throughout the engagement lifecycle and proactively identifying new AI opportunities as they emerge.\nPartner with clients throughout the MVP build cycle managing executive-level expectations, communicating progress with clarity and poise, enabling client teams, and ensuring a comprehensive, well-documented handoff to delivery and service line teams for scaled implementation.\nDevelop and present client-ready solution artifacts including proposals, Statements of Work, architecture decks, and executive narratives that make complex AI accessible to senior business audiences.\nApply architecture decisions that balance quality, safety, latency, cost, and model risk establishing reusable deployment patterns that benefit the broader practice.\nOrchestrate cross-functional pursuit teams across sales, engineering, delivery, and ecosystem partners ensuring consistent, differentiated outcomes for clients.\nIdentify and codify repeatable deployment patterns contributing insights back to product, engineering, and practice leadership.\nMentor and develop junior engineers through deal reviews, coaching, and development planning.\nWork model\nWe 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.\nThe 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.\nWhat you need to have to be considered\nExperience: 8+ years in AI/ML engineering, solution architecture, pre-sales, or technical consulting.\nExecutive Presence: Proven ability to engage C-suite and senior business executives with authority, composure, and influence; commanding credibility in high-stakes client settings.\nProduction Delivery: Demonstrated success deploying GenAI-powered solutions in client or enterprise environments at scale.\nDiscovery & Solutioning: Proven ability to lead structured discovery, ideation workshops, and solution design for complex AI opportunities.\nClient Relationship Management: Track record of building and sustaining senior executive relationships and growing account presence over the engagement lifecycle.\nThese will help you stand out\nExecutive Presence & Credibility - Commanding trust and authority in C-suite and senior executive settings; navigating complex organizational dynamics and influencing key decisions with confidence and composure.\nIdeation & Art-of-the-Possible - Guiding senior client leaders toward transformative AI scenarios and measurable business value creation.\nSolutioning Excellence - Designing scalable, feasible, and differentiated AI solutions across diverse industry contexts.\nAI/ML Technical Depth - Comprehensive mastery of GenAI, LLMs, ML engineering, data pipelines, and agentic architectures in production environments.\nHandoff & Continuity - Ensuring MVP-to-delivery transitions are thorough, well-documented, and set service line teams up for successful scaled implementation.\nHigh Agency - Ability to navigate ambiguity, operate autonomously, and represent Cognizant at the highest level in client environments.\nExperience in a specific enterprise vertical; background in AI consulting, technical advisory, or professional services\nTechnical Skills & Tools\nLanguages & Engineering: Strong production coding across Python and at least one additional language; fluency in enterprise integration patterns.\nAI/ML & GenAI: Deep production expertise in LLMs, agentic architectures, evaluation frameworks, and MLOps/LLMOps at scale.\nCloud Platforms: Multi-hyperscaler depth across AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, and Azure AI Foundry; owns model selection, routing, open-weight self-hosting, and cost/latency optimization.\nAgent & Orchestration Frameworks: Designs multi-agent and stateful agent systems; selects among LangGraph, CrewAI, Microsoft Agent Framework, and vendor SDKs based on control, latency, and cost trade-offs; applies orchestration patterns (supervisor/worker, human-in-the-loop checkpoints).\nRAG & Retrieval: Designs enterprise retrieval architectures; evaluates vector store and indexing trade-offs for accuracy, scale, and cost.\nLLMOps - Eval & Observability: Establishes the evaluation and observability strategy for an engagement (LangSmith, Langfuse, Arize Phoenix, or Braintrust), including self-hosted options for data-residency requirements.\nResponsible AI & Governance: Embeds Responsible AI by design - model risk, safety, and bias controls - aligned to NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001, and the EU AI Act; applies sector compliance (SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI) as relevant.\nPractice Contribution: Codifies reusable patterns, accelerators, and reference implementations that build team IP.\nSalary and Other Compensation:\nThe annual salary for this position is between $130,000-$230,000 depending on experience and other qualifications of the successful candidate.\nBenefits\nThis 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. Cognizant offers the following benefits for this position, subject to apply\nCognizant offers the following benefits for this position, subject to applicable eligibility requirements:\n· Medical/Dental/Vision/Life Insurance\n· Paid holidays plus Paid Time Off\n· 401(k) plan and contributions\n· Long-term/Short-term Disability\n· Paid Parental Leave\n· Employee Stock Purchase Plan\nDisclaimer: 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.\nWork Authorization\nMust be legally authorized to work in the United States without the need for employer sponsorship, now or any time in the future.","description_format":"text","description_chars":7644,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":8,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Hybrid work","Life insurance","Parental leave"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Science & Engineering","IT Outsourcing & Dedicated Teams","Engineering Services","Cloud Consulting & Migration"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-09T08:40:53Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":9,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.319,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":124,"expected_fill_days":20,"reasons":["conf:3","stale_co","velocity","win:tail","crowd:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-25T05:49:26Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":230000,"is_top_pay":false},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/cognizant-staff-ai-customer-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/cognizant-staff-ai-customer-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-26T03:32:35Z","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":4785,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-27T00:00:00Z"}},"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-staff-ai-customer-engineer"},{"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-staff-ai-customer-engineer"},{"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-staff-ai-customer-engineer"},{"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-staff-ai-customer-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fcognizant-staff-ai-customer-engineer"}]}