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Leading at Cognizant
This is a Leadership role at Cognizant. We believe how you lead is as important as what you deliver. Cognizant leaders at every level: Drive our business strategy and inspire teams around our future. Live the leadership behaviors , leading themselves, others and the business. Uphold our Values , role modeling them in every action and decision. Nurture our people and culture , creating a workplace where all can thrive.
At Cognizant, leadership transcends titles and is embodied in actions and behaviors. We empower our leaders at every level to drive business strategy, inspire teams, uphold our values, and foster an inclusive culture.
About the role
As a Chief Strategy Officer – AI Platforms (AIP), you will make an impact by driving the strategic vision and competitive positioning of Cognizant's AI Platforms business, shaping organic and inorganic growth priorities. You will be a valued member of the team and work collaboratively with stakeholders and clients.
In this role, you will:
Enterprise Growth Strategy
- Define 3\-5 year AI Platform growth strategy, strategic bets, market entry priorities and value\-creation roadmap
- Align leadership on ambition, sequencing, trade\-offs and success measures
Portfolio Strategy \& Capital Allocation
- Own Invest / Grow / Optimize / Harvest / Sunset portfolio framework and resource\-allocation logic
- Govern product\-family P\&Ls, R\&D prioritization, ROI/ROPC and value realization
Platform Monetization \& GTM Strategy
- Define SaaS, usage\-based, tokenized and outcome\-based commercial models
- Partner with Sales, Marketing and FSE to package offerings, pricing, analyst positioning and sales plays
- M\&A, Alliances \& Ecosystem Strategy
- Lead build / buy / partner decisions, strategic acquisitions, hyperscaler / ISV alliances and integration thesis
Market \& Competitive Intelligence
- Track competitors, emerging AI trends, whitespace, pricing movements and client buying signals
Strategy Execution \& Governance
- Convert strategy into OKRs, transformation programs, executive scorecards, decision rights and operating cadence
Cross\-functional Leadership \& Capability Building
- Build the strategy bench and drive alignment across Product, Engineering, GTM, Finance, Operations and Customer Success
Consistently demonstrate the Cognizant Way to Lead, which means operating with Personal Leadership (building trust, collaboration, and inclusion), Organizational Leadership (driving vision and purpose, demonstrating a strategic and enterprise mindset, and creating and communicating a bold direction that inspires purpose), and Business Leadership (exemplifying client focus, managing ambiguity with accountability and results, and operating with financial acumen)
What you need to have to be considered
- Minimum 20\+ years in enterprise software / AI platform strategy, product portfolio leadership, SaaS/PaaS GTM or corporate strategy
- Minimum 10\+ years influencing executive\-level capital allocation, portfolio governance, M\&A / alliances or business transformation
- Proven record scaling product/platform businesses, defining recurring revenue models, and leading cross\-functional strategy execution
- Strong healthcare / regulated\-industry exposure preferred; experience across multiple industries and global markets strongly preferred
- Embodiment of the Cognizant Way to Lead : Leading Self, Leading Others, \& Leading the Business
- The embodiment of Cognizant’s Values of: Work as One, Dare to Innovate, Raise the Bar, Do The right Thing, \& Own It
These will help you succeed
- Strategy \& Value Creation: Expert in market\-backed strategic choices, scenario planning, value pools and enterprise value growth
- Portfolio \& Capital Discipline: Advanced product\-family P\&L, ROPC, capital allocation, lifecycle and investment governance
- Platform Commercialization: SaaS/PaaS, tokenized/usage pricing, packaging, marketplace, NRR and platform attach economics
- AI / Technology Fluency: Working knowledge of AI platforms, GenAI, cloud, data, APIs, MLOps, responsible AI and platform architecture
- Executive Influence: Board/ELT\-ready communication, negotiation, stakeholder alignment and decision\-rights design
- Transformation Leadership: Operating model design, OKRs, cadence management, cross\-functional change leadership and accountability systems
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 client or Cognizant office. Regardless of your working arrangement, we are here to support a healthy work\-life balance though our various 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
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:
Applications will be accepted until August 15, 2026
The annual salary for this position is between $320,000 to $400,000depending on the experience and other qualifications of the successful candidate.
This 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.
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
Disclaimer: 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, subject to applicable law.
Salary Context
This $320K-$400K range is above the 75th percentile for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $180K across 1841 roles with salary data).
View full AI/ML Engineer salary data →Role Details
About This Role
AI/ML Engineers build and deploy machine learning models in production. They work across the full ML lifecycle: data pipelines, model training, evaluation, and serving infrastructure. The role has evolved significantly over the past two years. Where ML Engineers once spent most of their time on model architecture, the job now tilts heavily toward inference optimization, cost management, and integrating LLM capabilities into existing systems. Companies want engineers who can ship production systems, and the experimenter-only role is fading fast.
Day-to-day, you're writing training pipelines, debugging data quality issues, setting up evaluation frameworks, and figuring out why your model performs differently in staging than it did on your dev set. The best ML engineers are obsessive about reproducibility and measurement. They instrument everything. They know that a model is only as good as the data feeding it and the infrastructure serving it.
Across the 3,708 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 70% of the market. At Cognizant, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
What the Work Looks Like
A typical week might include: debugging a data pipeline that's silently dropping 3% of training examples, running A/B tests on a new model version, writing documentation for a feature flag system that lets you roll back model deployments, and reviewing a junior engineer's PR for a new evaluation metric. Meetings tend to be cross-functional since ML touches product, engineering, and data teams.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
Skills in Demand for This Role
Python and PyTorch dominate the requirements. Most roles expect experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and familiarity with ML frameworks like TensorFlow or JAX. RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) has become a top-3 skill requirement as companies integrate LLMs into their products. Docker and Kubernetes show up in about a third of postings, reflecting the production focus of the role.
Beyond the core stack, employers increasingly want experience with experiment tracking tools (MLflow, Weights & Biases), feature stores, and vector databases. Fine-tuning experience is valuable but less common than you'd think from reading Twitter. Most production LLM work is RAG and prompt engineering, not fine-tuning. If you have both, you're in a strong position.
Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
Compensation Benchmarks
AI/ML Engineer roles pay a median of $218,750 based on 3,817 positions with disclosed compensation. C-Level-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $250,000. This role's midpoint ($360K) sits 65% above the category median. Disclosed range: $320K to $400K.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $217,500. Top-quartile compensation starts at $272,100. The 90th percentile reaches $325,000. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($300,000) and Research Engineer ($280,000). By seniority level: Entry: $120,000; Mid: $200,000; Senior: $230,000; Director: $272,150; VP: $250,000.
Cognizant AI Hiring
Cognizant has 22 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across Data Scientist, AI/ML Engineer, AI Architect. Positions span Irving, TX, US, Louisville, KY, US, New York, NY, US. Compensation range: $85K - $435K.
Location Context
AI roles in New York pay a median of $220,000 across 1,045 tracked positions.
Career Path
Common paths into AI/ML Engineer roles include Data Scientist, Software Engineer, Research Engineer.
From here, career progression typically leads toward ML Architect, AI Engineering Manager, Principal ML Engineer.
The fastest path into ML engineering is through software engineering with a self-directed ML education. A CS degree helps, but production engineering skills matter more than academic credentials. Build something that works, deploy it, and measure it. That portfolio project is worth more than a Coursera certificate. For career growth, the fork comes around the senior level: go deep on technical complexity (staff/principal track) or move into managing ML teams.
What to Expect in Interviews
Expect system design questions around ML pipelines: how you'd build a training pipeline for a specific use case, handle data drift, or design A/B testing infrastructure for model deployments. Coding rounds typically involve Python, with emphasis on data manipulation (pandas, numpy) and algorithm implementation. Take-home assignments often ask you to build an end-to-end ML pipeline from raw data to deployed model.
When evaluating opportunities: Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
AI Hiring Overview
The AI job market has 3,708 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 102 entry-level, 1,705 mid-level, 1,469 senior, and 432 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 14% of the market (508 positions). The remaining 3,180 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $217,500. Top-quartile compensation starts at $272,100. The 90th percentile reaches $325,000. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($300,000 median, 21 roles); Research Engineer ($280,000 median, 147 roles); AI Architect ($254,798 median, 67 roles).
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
The AI Job Market Today
The AI job market spans 3,708 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (2,605), Data Scientist (310), AI Software Engineer (259). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.
The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (102) are outnumbered by mid-level (1,705) and senior (1,469) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 432 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 14% of all AI roles (508 positions), with 3,180 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.
AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $217,500. Top-quartile roles start at $272,100, and the 90th percentile reaches $325,000. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.
Category matters for compensation. AI Safety roles lead at $300,000 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $140,000. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.
The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Python (1,890 postings), Aws (1,103 postings), Azure (877 postings), Rag (855 postings), Gcp (631 postings), Prompt Engineering (560 postings), Pytorch (545 postings), Claude (498 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.
Frequently Asked Questions
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