Staff Architect: Forward‑Deployed Data & AI Solutions

Cognizant; Plano (TX); On-site; USD 130,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical/Dental/Vision/Life Insurance

Paid holidays and PTO

401(k) plan and matching

Disability coverage

Parental leave

Employee Stock Purchase Plan

Job summary

Cognizant is seeking a Staff Architect, Forward-Deployed Engineering, to translate enterprise data and AI strategy into scalable, production-ready solutions. You will collaborate with principal architects, data engineers, product teams, and stakeholders to design and govern data products and modern data platforms.

This role blends architecture leadership with hands-on ownership, ensuring roadmaps are delivered against business objectives, operational metrics, and transformation goals.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in data engineering, data architecture, analytics, or related technology disciplines.
• 3+ years of experience serving as a Staff Architect, Solution Architect, Lead Data Architect, or comparable technical leadership role.
• Hands-on experience designing and implementing Databricks Lakehouse solutions in production environments.
• Experience building and supporting enterprise data pipelines, data platforms, and large-scale modern data architectures.
• Strong expertise in data modeling, Data Vault methodologies, canonical data models, dimensional modeling, and source-to-target mapping design.
• Experience integrating AI, Generative AI, or agentic solutions into enterprise data ecosystems.
• Strong experience developing and deploying ETL/ELT solutions using PySpark and cloud-based data engineering technologies.
• Experience implementing CI/CD processes, automated testing, and quality assurance for enterprise data pipelines.
• Demonstrated ability to own technical delivery commitments with measurable business and operational outcomes.
• Excellent communication, stakeholder management, problem-solving, and technical leadership skills.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement enterprise data solutions spanning Bronze, Silver, and Gold data layers, canonical data models, and modern data architecture patterns.
• Lead the integration of AI-enabled capabilities, data products, automation frameworks, and agent-based solutions into enterprise data platforms.
• Own the technical delivery of assigned transformation initiatives, ensuring successful execution against business outcomes, performance targets, and operational metrics.
• Establish and maintain data governance, lineage, quality, and operational best practices across data products and platform capabilities.
• Provide technical leadership, mentorship, and oversight for engineering teams through architecture reviews, solution design sessions, and delivery governance.

Skills

Data Engineering

Data Architecture

Leadership

Databricks

PySpark

CI/CD

Stakeholder Mgmt

Tools

Databricks

Delta Lake

Delta Live Tables

Unity Catalog

Mosaic AI

Databricks SQL

Power BI

Job description

Cognizant is seeking a Staff Architect, Forward-Deployed Engineering, to translate enterprise data and AI strategy into scalable, production-ready solutions. You will collaborate with principal architects, data engineers, product teams, and stakeholders to design and govern data products and modern data platforms.

This role blends architecture leadership with hands-on ownership, ensuring roadmaps are delivered against business objectives, operational metrics, and transformation goals.