Apply on Employer Site

Cognizant · 13 hours ago

Lead AI Engineer, Consulting Principal

Irving, TX

Full-time

Hybrid

Senior Level, Lead/Staff

$122K/yr - $224K/yr

8+ years exp

Cognizant is seeking a Lead AI Engineer who will act as a leader and mentor in AI Engineering, bridging traditional software development with AI advancements. The role involves building an ecosystem of AI talent, overseeing AI product development, and ensuring high-quality data set engineering while remaining hands-on in coding tasks.

ConsultingIndustrial AutomationInformation TechnologySoftwareSoftware Engineering

No H1B

Responsibilities

AI Engineering Leadership & Mentorship

Teach to Fish: Actively pair with developers to transition them from traditional software roles to high-performing AI Engineers

Scale the Knowledge: Establish "mentor-the-mentor" programs to ensure AI Engineering practices are disseminated across the entire organization

Lead by Doing: Remain hands-on in the codebase, demonstrating how to apply Extreme Programming (XP)—such as Pair Programming and TDD—to non-deterministic AI outputs

Advanced AI Integration

Context & Prompt Engineering: Architect complex, structured prompt engineering and context engineering pipelines that move beyond simple chat inputs into sophisticated agentic workflows

AI-PDLC Mastery: Drive the AI Product Development Lifecycle, utilizing spec-driven development and agent-as-code patterns to ensure AI features are predictable, testable, and aligned with business goals

Data Set Engineering: Oversee the curation and engineering of high-quality data sets for model grounding and fine-tuning

Modern Enterprise Architecture

Java Full-Stack: Leverage deep experience in the Spring Framework to build robust, scalable backends that treat AI models as integrated system components

AI Tooling & Frameworks: Deploy and manage advanced tools including Google Vertex AI, Langchain, CrewAI, MCP, and GitHub Copilot

Qualification

AI Engineering LeadershipJava Full-StackExtreme Programming (XP)AI Product Development LifecycleContext & Prompt EngineeringData Set EngineeringAI Tooling & FrameworksTeaching SkillsLeadershipMentorship