Responsible AI Engineer

Cognizant; Chennai; On-site; INR 2,800,000 - 4,200,000; Full time

Job summary

Cognizant is hiring a Responsible AI Engineer to build governance, safety, and compliance layers for enterprise AI systems. You will collaborate across AI engineers, risk teams, and client stakeholders to ensure safe, auditable deployments.

The role emphasizes runtime guardrails, red-teaming, and regulatory mapping (EU AI Act, NIST RMF), plus bias evaluation and observability pipelines. Onsite in Chennai, with options for other Cognizant offices.

Qualifications

• Experience in software or ML engineering with hands-on exposure to AI safety, governance, or trust engineering.
• Proven experience deploying AI systems in enterprise or regulated environments.
• Strong Python programming skills with experience building evaluation pipelines and governance tooling.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement runtime guardrails and safety architectures for LLM/agentic AI systems.
• Lead red-teaming and adversarial testing to identify vulnerabilities before production deployment.
• Build and operationalize AI governance and compliance frameworks translating EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF into engineering controls.
• Develop and deploy fairness, bias, and model evaluation pipelines with hallucination detection and subgroup analysis.
• Establish observability and auditability via logging, audit trails, governance metrics.

Skills

Software/ML engineering

AI safety governance

Risk/regulatory alignment

Python programming

Executive communication

Tools

NeMo Guardrails

Giskard

Arize

LangChain / LangGraph

Job description

Responsible AI Engineer

About the role

As a Responsible AI Engineer , you will make an impact by engineering the trust, safety, and governance layer for agentic AI systems deployed at enterprise scale. You will be a valued member of the AI Market Unit (FDE Pod) and work collaboratively with AI engineers, architects, risk teams, and client stakeholders to ensure every AI solution is safe, compliant, and production-ready.

In this role, you will:

• Design and implement runtime guardrails and safety architectures for LLM and agentic AI systems, including input/output controls, prompt injection detection, and policy enforcement mechanisms
• Lead red-teaming and adversarial testing initiatives to identify vulnerabilities such as jailbreaks, prompt injections, and trust boundary violations before production deployment
• Build and operationalize AI governance and compliance frameworks , translating regulations (e.g., EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF) into enforceable engineering controls
• Develop and deploy fairness, bias, and model evaluation pipelines , including hallucination detection, groundedness validation, and subgroup performance analysis
• Establish observability and auditability for AI systems through structured logging, audit trails, governance metrics, and incident response processes

Work model

At Cognizant, we strive to provide flexibility wherever possible, and we are here to support a healthy work-life balance through our various wellbeing programs. Based on this role’s business requirements, this is an onsite position requiring 5 days a week in a Cognizant office in Chennai, Bangalore, or Hyderabad .

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

• Experience in software engineering or ML engineering , with hands‑on exposure to AI safety, governance, or trust engineering
• Proven experience building and deploying LLM or agentic AI systems in enterprise or regulated environments
• Strong expertise in at least two of the following: guardrails engineering, red teaming, bias/fairness evaluation, AI regulatory compliance
• Working knowledge of AI regulatory frameworks such as EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 42001, or sector‑specific compliance standards
• Strong Python programming skills , with experience building evaluation pipelines, observability systems, or AI governance tooling
• Ability to collaborate with security, legal, and risk stakeholders , translating technical AI risks into actionable insights for business leaders
• Excellent communication and executive‑level presentation skills , with experience presenting to senior client stakeholders

These will help you stand out

• Hands‑on experience conducting red‑team assessments on production AI systems and remediating critical vulnerabilities
• Experience creating audit‑ready AI governance and compliance documentation for external or regulatory review
• Ability to influence AI system design decisions by balancing technical feasibility with regulatory and risk considerations
• Experience integrating fairness, safety evaluation, and monitoring pipelines into CI/CD workflows
• Exposure to enterprise AI tooling such as NeMo Guardrails, Giskard, Arize, LangChain/LangGraph, or similar ecosystems

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.