Senior Partner Consulting, AI

Leading at Cognizant

This is a Leadership role  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 Senior Partner Consulting, AI, you will define the direction for enterprise-scale GenAI adoption while leading critical client relationships with strong technical credibility. You will engage C-suite stakeholders on strategy, value realization, and risk, and bring depth in architecture decisions (LLMs, RAG, context engineering, agentic patterns, security, and integration) to guide teams toward reliable, production-grade outcomes.

You will be a key member of the Enterprise AI Consulting team, collaborating closely with Managing Partners, enterprise architects, engineering teams, and clients to deliver impactful, scalable solutions.

In this role, you will:

* Own senior client relationships and executive forums; shape GenAI strategy, roadmaps, and investment cases tied to measurable outcomes.

* Define end-to-end reference architectures for enterprise AI (LLM platform choices, RAG & context architecture, agent frameworks, integration, security, governance) and ensure they are adopted consistently across programs.

* Lead portfolio shaping: identify repeatable offerings, accelerators, and GTM narratives; sponsor thought leadership and IP creation.

* Set the operating model for delivery: governance, quality gates, Responsible AI controls, and production readiness standards (LLMOps/GenAIOps).

* Serve as the escalation point for complex architecture or delivery risks; guide teams through trade-offs in latency, cost, safety, and enterprise constraints.

* Build and lead senior, multi-disciplinary teams across strategy, architecture, data, engineering, and change management.

* Stay hands-on enough to challenge designs and review critical artifacts (architecture, evaluation strategy, context/RAG approach), while delegating implementation depth to delivery leaders.

* 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

* 15+ years in technology consulting, enterprise architecture, and large-scale program leadership with significant client-facing accountability.

* Track record leading enterprise transformations (ERP/SCM/CRM, modernization, cloud) and translating them into an AI-enabled operating model.

* Executive stakeholder management experience (CIO/CTO/CDO/COO) including steering committees, value tracking, and risk/compliance discussions.

* Ability to build and scale teams and offerings: hiring, coaching, partner ecosystems, GTM, and reusable assets.

* Strong working knowledge of LLMs, RAG, context engineering, agentic design patterns, and evaluation approaches sufficient to guide architecture and review delivery quality.

* Experience selecting and governing enterprise AI platforms (model providers, vector stores, orchestration, guardrails), balancing cost, latency, safety, and compliance.

* Deep familiarity with Responsible AI, security (prompt injection, data leakage), governance, and enterprise risk frameworks for AI systems.

* Comfort guiding teams on architecture for secure deployment (networking, identity, data residency, observability, LLMOps) across cloud and hybrid environments.

* Strong prompt and context engineering: system prompts, structured outputs, tool-use prompting, and context assembly patterns.

* Experience building agentic systems with orchestration frameworks (or custom implementations) and designing safe tool integrations.

* Embodiment of the Cognizant Way to Lead:
Leading Self, Leading Others, & Leading the Business.

* Embodiment of Cognizant's Values:
Work as One, Dare to Innovate, Raise the Bar, Do the Right Thing, & Own It.

These will help you succeed

* MBA, M.Tech, or equivalent advanced degree; certifications in cloud (AWS/Azure/GCP) or AI platforms.

* Domain depth in one or more industries: financial services, manufacturing, retail, healthcare, or public sector.

* Experience with frameworks such as TOGAF, SAFe, or industry-specific architecture bodies.

* Published thought leadership, conference presentations, or active…