Master Frontier Engineer

Cognizant; Amsterdam; Hybrid; EUR 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

NS business card

25 days holiday

Laptop provided

Smartphone provided

Pension scheme

Health insurance

Technology backbone

International environment

Job summary

Cognizant is seeking a Master Frontier Engineer to shape the next era of enterprise AI. You will act as the lead architect within a Frontier pod, guiding architecture, governance and evolution of complex agentic systems that deliver measurable business outcomes for top organizations.

You will design scalable AI-native architectures, establish governance and tooling, mentor engineers and translate bold ideas into production-ready capabilities.

Qualifications

• 7-15 years of delivery experience with AI systems design.
• Strong agentic system architecture skills and AI orchestration.
• Hands-on experience with enterprise agent platforms (Copilot Studio, Agentforce) and MCP/A2A protocols.
• Expertise in RAG-at-scale, grounding strategy, knowledge graphs and ontologies.
• Agentic test-framework design with AI security and access controls.

Responsibilities

• Design and deploy advanced agentic systems and workflows with governance for permissions, context-sharing and data access.
• Architect enterprise-scale agent deployments, create trust layers and governance frameworks for responsible AI adoption.
• Define orchestration patterns, state management, tool-calling frameworks and resilience models for complex AI ecosystems.
• Establish AI quality engineering practices, including agent evaluation frameworks and synthetic data strategies.
• Design and scale enterprise knowledge architectures, ontologies and retrieval systems for trustworthy, context-aware AI experiences.

Skills

Delivery experience

AI architecture

Agent orchestration

State-management patterns

Copilot Studio

Agentforce

MCP/A2A protocols

RAG-at-scale

Knowledge graphs/ontologies

Agentic testing & security

Tools

Copilot Studio

Agentforce

Job description

About the role

As a Master Frontier Engineer, you'll help define what's next in enterprise AI. Acting as the lead architect within a Frontier pod, you'll combine deep technical expertise, business acumen and strategic thinking to design AI-native systems that create measurable outcomes for some of the world's leading organizations.

As a trusted technical advisor, you'll guide the architecture, governance and evolution of complex agentic systems, translate complex challenges into scalable AI solutions, establish engineering standards and mentor the next generation of Frontier talent, turning bold ideas into production-ready capabilities that create lasting value.

In this role, you will

• Design and deploy advanced agentic systems and workflows, establishing governance models for permissions, context-sharing and data access.
• Architect enterprise-scale agent deployments on leading AI platforms, creating trust layers and cross-agent governance frameworks that enable responsible AI adoption.
• Define orchestration patterns, state management strategies, tool-calling frameworks and resilience models for complex AI ecosystems.
• Establish AI quality engineering practices, including agent evaluation frameworks, synthetic data strategies and agentic testing methodologies.
• Design and scale enterprise knowledge architectures, ontologies and retrieval systems that enable trustworthy, context-aware AI experiences.

Work model

We believe hybrid work is the way forward as we strive to provide flexibility wherever possible. Based on this role's business requirements, this is a hybrid position requiring 3 days a week in a client or Cognizant office in the Netherlands. Regardless of your working arrangement, we are here to support a healthy work-life balance through our various wellbeing programs.

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 must have to be considered

• 7-15 years of delivery experience with deep AI-systems design expertise.
• Strong agentic system architecture skills, including AI orchestration and state-management patterns.
• Hands-on experience with enterprise agent platforms such as Copilot Studio or Agentforce, and MCP/A2A agent protocols.
• Expertise in RAG-at-scale and grounding strategy, plus knowledge graph and ontology engineering.
• Agentic test-framework design experience together with AI security and access controls.

These will help you succeed

• AI-native solution architecture expertise paired with strong agentic engineering and orchestration.
• Context and retrieval engineering depth for grounding agents at enterprise scale.
• AI quality and evaluation design experience across agentic systems.
• Technical leadership and advisory skills, with strong client engagement and the ability to mentor engineers.
• Domain fluency, contextual judgment and a strong business-outcome orientation.

What We Offer

• A competitive salary based on your qualities and experience
• NS business card to cover your commute expenses
• 25 days of paid holiday per year
• A laptop and a smartphone
• A pension scheme
• Health insurance
• Organisation driven by technology – we have a tremendous technology backbone
• Open, 'can do' team spirit and international environment

We're excited to meet people who share our mission and can make an impact in a variety of ways. Think about your transferable experiences and unique skills that make you stand out as someone who can bring new and exciting things to this role.