Team Leader - Maps

Cognizant; Hyderabad; On-site; INR 1,200,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Job summary

Cognizant is seeking an experienced Operations Leader to manage a team of data evaluators focused on geospatial mapping and ground-truth standards. You will ensure SLA attainment, quality control, and proactive issue prevention while coordinating with Quality, Policy, and Product teams.

The role emphasizes RCA-driven improvements, cross-functional collaboration, and people development, with opportunities to implement automated workflows and governance across mapping workflows.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Geography, GIS, Science, Engineering, Commerce, Management, CS or related field.
• 5+ years in Google operations(Maps & COMO) or data evaluation environments.
• At least 2 years of direct team management experience.

Responsibilities

• Lead a data evaluation team to meet SLAs, KPIs, and KRAs with accuracy and throughput targets.
• Collaborate with QC, Policy Engagement, and Product teams to align output with mapping policies and standards.
• Perform RCA, identify bottlenecks, and drive automated improvements with engineering.
• Provide coaching and development to team members; rotate through mapped toolsets and training.

Skills

Team management

Data-driven decisions

Analytical skills

Stakeholder engagement

Policy adherence

Root Cause Analysis

GenAI evaluation

Education

Bachelor's degree in Geography

Tools

SQL

Dashboarding tools

Excel/Sheets

GIS software

Job description

Role & responsibilities

1. Operational & SLA Management

• Manage a team of data evaluators to consistently meet or exceed contractual SLAs, KPIs, and KRAs (e.g., accuracy, throughput & quality scores).
• Maintain operational efficiency and effectiveness across all geospatial and GEN AI evaluation workflows.
• Monitor daily team performance, and implement targeted action plans to closure.

2. Quality, Policy & Stakeholder Engagement

• Partner closely with Quality Control (QC), Policy Engagement, and Product teams to align operational output with evolving mapping policies and ground-truth standards.
• Manage metrics and enhance their utility by establishing strong correlations between data quality scores and overall user/customer satisfaction.
• Conduct pre-emptive and predictive analysis to reduce error recurrence and shift operations toward proactive issue prevention.

3. Continuous Improvement & Innovation

• Lead Root Cause Analysis (RCA) efforts and foster a strong, data-driven deep-dive culture within the team.
• Identify workflow bottlenecks, policy ambiguities, and optimization opportunities; collaborate with engineering and technical teams to develop automated solutions.
• Drive workflow and policy change management seamlessly across the team.

4. People Management & Development

• Manage team performance through continuous feedback and individualized coaching.

Drive skill enhancement through structured knowledge sharing, cross-training on specialized mapping toolsets, and project rotations

Note: ON PAPER TEAM LEADER Experience is mandatory.

Preferred candidate profile

• Education: Bachelors degree in Geography, GIS, Science, Engineering, Commerce, Management, Computer Science, or a related field.
• Experience: 5+ years of experience in Google operations(Maps & COMO) or data evaluation environments, including at least 2 years of direct team management experience.
• Geospatial / Maps Domain Knowledge: Strong understanding of spatial/geographic concepts, Points of Interest (POI) data, and location-based data quality standards.
• GenAI & Evaluation Familiarity: Experience with human-in-the-loop (HITL) evaluation frameworks, LLM/GenAI prompt testing, or data annotation pipelines is highly desirable.
• Analytical Skills: Demonstrated capability in data-driven decision-making, RCA methodologies, and metric tracking (Excel/Sheets, SQL, or dashboarding tools).
• Communication: Excellent verbal and written communication skills for cross-functional stakeholder alignment.