Cognizant · 6 days ago
Gen AI Architect, Consulting Principal
McLean, VA
Full-time
Onsite
Senior Level, Lead/Staff
$122K/yr - $224K/yr
10+ years expCognizant is seeking a GenAI Architect, Consulting Principal who combines strategic foresight with hands-on engineering to lead the technical architecture for Agentic AI solutions across the enterprise. The role involves evaluating use case feasibility, shaping reference architectures, and guiding platform adoption while collaborating with various teams to architect scalable and secure GenAI capabilities.
ConsultingIndustrial AutomationInformation TechnologySoftwareSoftware Engineering
No H1B
Responsibilities
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
Qualification
Required
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
Excellent communication and stakeholder management; ability to present architecture trade-offs and influence executive decision-making
Preferred
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)
Benefits
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
Company
Cognizant
Cognizant is a professional services company that helps clients alter their business, operating, and technology models for the digital era.
10001+ employees
Funding
Current Stage
Public CompanyTotal Funding
$0.24MKey Investors
Summit Financial Wealth Advisors
2025-03-08Post Ipo Equity
2016-11-18Post Ipo Equity· $0.24M
1998-06-19IPO
Leadership Team
Ravi Kumar S
Chief Executive Officer
Anil Cheriyan
CTO / EVP Strategy & Technology
Recent News
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2026-01-24
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