Agentic AI Commerce Solutioner

Work Model: Hybrid - US and are comfortable with up to 50% travel.

-Dallas / Chicago / Atlanta / NY-NJ / San Francisco/ Los Angeles-

Level: Senior Director

About the role:

This hybrid Senior Director-level role is designed for a seasoned Commerce Solution Architect who can shape, govern, and sell end-to-end digital and agentic commerce architectures for complex enterprise clients. The role combines deep traditional commerce platform expertise with emerging agentic commerce capability, including Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), Agent2Agent (A2A), Model Context Protocol (MCP), Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), multi-agent orchestration, and AI-mediated purchase journeys. The Solutioner translates business vision into scalable commerce platforms, agent-enabled experience models, and implementation-ready architecture patterns that deliver measurable business value, preserve brand control, protect customer data, and improve transaction outcomes across global markets.

Key Responsibilities:

Commerce solution architecture and governance
• Drive discovery sessions with business, technology, and commerce stakeholders to elicit detailed requirements and translate them into clear solution objectives aligned to enterprise strategy.
• Design end-to-end digital commerce architectures that integrate storefronts, order management, payment services, loyalty, CPQ, ERP, PIM, DAM, CMS, CDP, analytics, and downstream enterprise systems.
• Create solution blueprints, reference models, integration patterns, and implementation guardrails for commerce platforms that enable consistent delivery across business units and client accounts.
• Define non-functional requirements across performance, reliability, scalability, resilience, observability, security, privacy, and data protection to support peak commerce events and mission-critical workloads.
• Review technical designs and delivery approaches to ensure alignment with approved commerce architecture, engineering standards, vendor constraints, and enterprise guardrails.

Agentic commerce and open protocol architecture
• Architect agentic commerce solutions that connect consumer AI surfaces, including Google AI Mode, Gemini, and third-party agents, to merchant systems through UCP, A2A, MCP, API, and event-driven integration patterns.
• Design multi-agent orchestration patterns for discovery, inventory validation, loyalty application, cart creation, checkout, post-purchase support, and human handoff across digital commerce journeys.
• Define implementation patterns for UCP primitives, Universal Cart concepts, identity linking, order management extensions, and emerging partner integrations as they apply to commerce transformation programs.
• Advise clients on brand sovereignty strategies that preserve UX control, first-party data ownership, merchandising influence, margin integrity, and post-purchase engagement when transactions occur inside AI-mediated surfaces.
• Architect mitigation strategies for zero-click commerce risks, including storefront traffic cannibalization, first-party data leakage, brand experience displacement, and AI-agent fulfillment handoff gaps.

Pre-sales solutioning and pursuit leadership
• Serve as a senior solution architect for high-priority commerce and agentic commerce pursuits, shaping technical narrative, solution strategy, delivery approach, and commercial feasibility.
• Develop differentiated RFP responses and proposal architectures that translate UCP, agentic AI, and commerce platform capabilities into quantified client business outcomes.
• Lead client discovery workshops with technology, digital, ecommerce, marketing, and commerce executives to diagnose current-state gaps and define readiness for digital and agentic commerce modernization.
• Partner with delivery, pricing, staffing, and margin teams to scope complex commerce engagements and develop credible implementation roadmaps.
• Articulate the business value of proposed commerce solutions to client stakeholders and internal executives, connecting architecture decisions to growth, operational efficiency, customer experience, and risk reduction.

Thought leadership and market positioning
• Author and contribute to external and internal points of view, whitepapers, blogs, conference materials, and client-facing presentations on agentic commerce architecture and implementation patterns.
• Represent the commerce architecture perspective at industry events, partner sessions, client briefings, and internal enablement forums.
• Build and maintain technical relationships with relevant commerce and AI ecosystem partners, including Google Commerce, Shopify, Salesforce, BigCommerce, payment providers, and cloud platform partners.
• Brief internal practice leaders, market teams, alliance leaders, and delivery teams on evolving agentic commerce protocols, platform capabilities, and competitive positioning.
• Convert lessons learned from pursuits and delivery into reusable solution archetypes, accelerators, playbooks, patterns, and standards.

Delivery enablement and capability development
• Mentor senior engineers, solution designers, and commerce architects on modern commerce architecture, agentic AI patterns, integration models, and delivery-quality expectations.
• Build a broader technical community of practice for commerce architecture, UCP readiness, agentic AI enablement, and reusable engineering standards.
• Partner with consulting, AI, cloud, data, security, and delivery practices to create cross-service commerce offerings and integrated solution models.
• Coordinate change planning so new commerce capabilities are introduced with minimal disruption, clear rollback strategies, and sustainment models.
• Drive continuous improvement by capturing lessons learned and updating reference patterns, solution assets, technical standards, and reusable components

Required Skills and Qualifications:
• Requires extensive experience designing and delivering large-scale digital commerce architectures using modern platforms, plus deep understanding of commerce domain processes and integration patterns.
• Requires significant practical experience in commerce technical implementation, including catalog modeling, order lifecycle flows, payment orchestration, tax and pricing rules, customer account management, loyalty, and checkout experiences.
• Requires proven track record in digital commerce solution architecture, including multi-team engagements and architectural governance from concept through deployment.
• Requires strong ability to operate at both blueprint level with executive stakeholders and detailed technical level with engineering and delivery teams.
• Nice to have experience with cloud-based commerce platforms, microservice-oriented architectures, composable commerce, MACH patterns, and event-driven integration strategies.
• Nice to have exposure to analytics, personalization, recommendation engines, targeted promotions, experimentation frameworks, and data strategies that convert commerce interactions and behavioral signals into insight.
• Nice to have experience working in hybrid delivery models with distributed teams while maintaining strong alignment among business vision, architecture decisions, implementation practices, and delivery outcomes.

Certifications Required - Experience:
• 12-18 years of professional experience, with substantial experience in senior solution architecture, digital commerce, technical leadership, consulting, systems integration, or commerce platform environments.
• At least 8 years in commerce architecture, solutioning, technical leadership, or related roles supporting enterprise retail, consumer goods, manufacturing, travel, B2B, B2C, or D2C commerce environments.
• Demonstrable record shaping, architecting, or winning complex commerce transformation programs for enterprise clients.
• Direct or adjacent experience with AI agent frameworks, agentic system design, or AI-enabled commerce use cases is strongly preferred.
• Preferred certifications or partner credentials may include Google Cloud, Google Commerce, Gemini, Shopify Plus Partner, Salesforce, Adobe, SAP Commerce, or comparable commerce/cloud credentials.

The annual salary for this position is between $220,000 - $240,000 depending 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:

Compensation 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.

Applicants may be required to attend interviews in person or by video conference. In addition, candidates may be required to present their current state or government issued ID during each interview.

While our system allows application in all languages, job required language(s) and proficiency level(s) vary. However, basic English proficiency is required for Company-wide communications purposes

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