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GenAI Architect, Consulting Principal

About the Role

We’re seeking a GenAI Architect who blends strategic foresight with hands-on engineering. This role leads the technical architecture for Agentic AI solutions across the enterprise—evaluating use case feasibility, shaping reference architectures, driving POCs and pilots, and guiding platform adoption. You’ll partner closely with product, engineering, data, and security teams to architect scalable, secure, and cost-effective GenAI capabilities aligned to business priorities. Candidates should have experience with enterprise GenAI architecture (multi-cloud preferably AWS, or on-prem) including model access patterns, orchestration, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), vector search, and guardrails

In this role, you will:

Strategy & Architecture

+ Assess use case feasibility (technical complexity, model fit, data readiness, latency/throughput, security/compliance constraints) and produce a go/no-go recommendation with solution options

+ Define the Agentic AI foundation and architect multi‑agent solutions that enable large‑scale, agent‑driven transformation.

+ Develop reference architectures and pattern libraries (e.g., RAG with enterprise search, function calling/agents, synthetic data generation, multimodal pipelines).

+ Design and implement POCs/pilots: data connectors, embeddings pipelines, prompt flows, context engineering, evaluation harnesses, and latency/cost benchmarking.

+ Build RAG pipelines: chunking, embeddings creation, vector indexing (e.g., Azure AI Search/OpenSearch/pgvector/Pinecone), source of truth tracing (citations).

+ Collaborate with governance teams to implement guardrails and safety layers: content filtering, jailbreak defense, policy checks, role-based prompts, function calling constraints.

+ Integrate GenAI with enterprise systems (APIs, microservices, messaging, identity/authorization).

+ Drive prompt engineering and promptOps: templates, variables, structured output parsing, context windows management, and hallucination reduction.

+ Partner with business stakeholders to prioritize use cases and translate requirements into technical designs.

+ Mentor engineering teams; review solution designs; conduct architecture gates and design authority meetings.

+ Create roadmaps and migration plans for scaling pilots to production, including cost and performance optimization.

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 regular travel (up to 50%) and presence in client or Cognizant offices on the US East Coast or Central Time Zones. Regardless of your working arrangement, we are here to support a healthy work-life balance through 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.

What you need to have to be considered

+ 10+ years in software/data/AI architecture; 2+ years hands-on with LLMs/GenAI in production or pilots.

+ Experience with cloud AI stacks in AWS

+ AWS: Bedrock, OpenSearch, Lambda, KMS, Step Functions.

+ Strong in Python/TypeScript/Java (choose based on stack) and building LLM apps using frameworks like LangChain, LlamaIndex, Semantic Kernel; experience with orchestration (Agents/Tools/Function Calling).

+ Deep understanding of RAG design: chunking strategies, embeddings (OpenAI, Cohere, text-embeddings, BGE), vector DBs (pgvector, Pinecone, Weaviate, Milvus, Azure AI Search), and evaluation metrics.

+ Preferred experience in security & compliance: OAuth/JWT, RBAC/ABAC, encryption, data masking, PII handling, auditability, Responsible AI.

+ Familiarity with model ecosystem (GPT, Claude, Gemini, Llama, Mistral, DeepSeek) and trade-offs (context, cost, latency, licensing).

+ Excellent communication and stakeholder management; ability to present architecture trade-offs and influence executive decision-making.

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.

Work Authorization:

Cognizant will only consider applicants for this position who are legally authorized to work in the United States without company sponsorship (H-1B, L-1B, L-1A, etc.)

Salary and Other Compensation:

Applications will be accepted until January 15, 2026

The annual salary for this position is between **$122,400 - $223,500** depending on experience and other qualifications of the successful candidate. 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.

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

Cognizant is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, protected Veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by law.