Chief Product Architect - Cognitive Intelligence Spine Platform

THE ROLE

This is a rare and consequential leadership opportunity. As Senior Director for the Cognitive Intelligence Spine Platform, you will own the product, the architecture, and the client narrative for CIS, Cognizant's flagship sovereign Physical AI platform. You will operate at the intersection of deep technical credibility, executive client engagement, and product strategy, serving as the primary face of CIS to C-suite buyers and as the architectural authority for the platform team. You will lead a globally distributed team of senior architects and infrastructure engineers across the United States and India, and you will be directly accountable for the evolution of CIS from its current production deployments into a scaled, multi-vertical enterprise platform. This role reports into the Global Head of Physical AI and is a cornerstone of Cognizant's MLEU growth strategy.

WHAT YOU WILL DO

As the platform owner, you will define and drive the CIS product roadmap in alignment with Cognizant's Physical AI strategy, translating client engagement learnings and market signals into architectural decisions and engineering priorities.

You will lead pre-sales and executive engagement for CIS opportunities, presenting the platform's sovereign AI architecture and value proposition to CIOs, CTOs, and Chief AI Officers at Fortune 500 enterprises.

You will architect and govern the end-to-end CIS technical design, spanning Azure PaaS, NVIDIA embedded edge, agentic AI orchestration, and sovereign data governance, ensuring the platform maintains its differentiated position as the only enterprise-owned, governed, and compounding institutional AI fabric in the market.

You will build and mentor the Global Physical AI platform team, establishing engineering standards, architectural review processes, and a culture of technical excellence.

You will partner with Cognizant's Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Azure AI Foundry alliance teams to co-develop joint go-to-market capabilities and ensure CIS remains at the leading edge of the Azure and NVIDIA ecosystem.

You will manage client relationships through the full engagement lifecycle, from initial briefing and architecture workshop through deployment, expansion, and executive business review.

WHAT YOU BRING

You bring fifteen or more years of experience in enterprise technology, with at least five years in a senior architecture or product leadership role at a consulting firm, systems integrator, or enterprise software company.

You have deep, hands-on expertise in Microsoft Azure PaaS, specifically Azure AI Foundry, Microsoft Fabric, Cosmos DB, Azure IoT Hub, Azure API Management, and Azure OpenAI Service, and you can speak to architectural trade-offs at the level of a principal engineer.

You have direct experience with NVIDIA embedded AI platforms, including Jetson Orin or AGX Orin, and understand the architectural requirements for deploying real-time inference workloads at the industrial edge.

You have led client-facing engagements at the C-suite level and can translate complex AI architecture into compelling business narratives that drive executive buy-in.

You have product management experience; you understand how to build a platform roadmap, manage competing stakeholder priorities, and make disciplined trade-off decisions under resource constraints.

You have consulting experience at a Tier 1 firm or equivalent, with a track record of building and scaling AI practices or platform businesses.

TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

Domain

Required Expertise

Azure PaaS

Azure AI Foundry, Microsoft Fabric, Cosmos DB, Azure IoT Hub, Azure API Management, Azure OpenAI Service, AKS

NVIDIA Embedded

Jetson Orin NX, AGX Orin, CUDA, TensorRT, DeepStream, edge inference pipelines

Agentic AI

LLM orchestration (LangChain, LlamaIndex, or equivalent), multi-agent frameworks, RAG architectures

Sovereign AI

Data governance, model governance, institutional knowledge base design, sovereign cloud deployment

Platform Architecture

Microservices, event-driven architecture, API-first design, real-time data pipelines

Cloud Infrastructure

Terraform/Bicep IaC, AKS, Azure DevOps, CI/CD pipelines

Client Engagement

Executive presentations, architecture workshops, pre-sales, RFP/RFI response

Product Management

Roadmap development, OKR frameworks, stakeholder management, agile delivery

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

Experience with Sovereign AI Factory deployments, including on-premises Azure Stack or air-gapped sovereign cloud environments, is strongly preferred. Prior experience leading a product practice at a global systems integrator or technology consulting firm is highly valued. Familiarity with industrial AI standards, including ISA-95, IEC 62443, or equivalent operational technology frameworks, is a plus. An advanced degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field is preferred.

Salary and other Compensation

The annual salary for this position is between $250,000 - $325,000 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: 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.

Work Authorization

Must be legally authorized to work in the United States without the need for employer sponsorship, now or any time in the future.