AI Engineer - Azure (Onsite)

Cognizant; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 110,000 - 135,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical/Dental/Vision/Life Insurance

401(k) plan and contributions

Paid holidays and PTO

Long-term/Short-term Disability

Paid Parental Leave

Employee Stock Purchase Plan

Job summary

Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation is seeking an AI Engineer to design, build, and operate production-grade generative AI systems on Microsoft Azure. You will own end-to-end RAG solutions from data ingestion to deployed services and expose agentic workflows and APIs for user access.

You will develop orchestration workflows, integrate LLMs like Azure OpenAI, and optimize prompts for accuracy, performance, and cost, while ensuring observability and reliability in production environments.

Qualifications

• Hands-on Python experience for backend services and automation.
• Hands-on experience with LangChain and/or LangGraph.
• Experience with RAG, embeddings, and vector search.
• Hands-on experience with Azure OpenAI and Azure AI Search.
• Proficiency with REST APIs, JSON, and Git.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement end-to-end RAG pipelines: data ingestion, embedding generation, vector database management, and retrieval optimization.
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Skills

Python

LangChain

LangGraph

RAG

embeddings

vector search

Azure OpenAI

Azure AI Search

REST APIs

JSON

Git

Tools

LangChain

LangGraph

Azure OpenAI

Azure AI Search

Docker

Job description

About the Role

We're looking for an AI Engineer to design, build, and operate production-grade generative AI systems on Microsoft Azure. You'll own retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) solutions end to end, from data ingestion through to monitored, deployed services, and build the agentic workflows and APIs that put them in users' hands.

What You'll Do

Build RAG systems

• Design and implement end-to-end RAG pipelines: data ingestion, embedding generation, vector database management, and retrieval optimization.
• Develop and maintain APIs that orchestrate RAG workflows, including retrieval, prompt handling, and model interaction.

Develop agentic AI workflows

• Build orchestration and multi-step reasoning workflows using Semantic Kernel, LangChain, or LangGraph, incorporating tool use and memory.
• Integrate LLMs such as Azure OpenAI, and tune prompts for accuracy, performance, and cost.

Ensure quality and reliability

• Implement observability, monitoring, and evaluation frameworks using LangSmith and Azure monitoring tools to track output quality, latency, and hallucination rates.
• Troubleshoot and improve retrieval quality, grounding accuracy, and response relevance.

Deploy and operate

• Deploy and manage AI services on Azure using CI/CD pipelines and containerization.
• Build and maintain scalable web applications using Python, Node.js, and React.

Build responsibly

• Apply responsible AI practices, including guardrails, security controls, and compliance standards.

Required

• Hands-on Python experience for backend services and automation
• Hands-on experience with LangChain and/or LangGraph
• Experience with RAG, embeddings, and vector search
• Hands-on experience with Azure OpenAI and Azure AI Search
• Proficiency with REST APIs, JSON, and Git

Nice to Have

• JavaScript experience (React, Node.js)
• Docker and container-based deployments
• Experience with Azure services such as Azure Container Apps or AKS, Azure Functions, Azure Monitor/Application Insights, and Key Vault

Salary and Other Compensation

The annual salary for this position is between $110,000- $135,000 depending on experience and other qualifications of the successful candidate.

This position is also eligible for Cognizant's discretionary annual incentive program, based on performance and subject to the terms of Cognizant's applicable plans.

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

Disclaimer

The salary, other compensation, and benefits information is accurate as of the date of this posting. Cognizant reserves the right to modify this information at any time, subject to applicable law.