Frontier Transformation Lead

As a Frontier Transformation Lead, you will drive measurable impact by guiding the transformation of a global engineering workforce toward AI-native ways of working and by accelerating the adoption of frontier capabilities across client engagements. You will partner with senior leaders across business, delivery, solutioning, operations, talent, and capability to translate AI offerings and accelerators into new operating models, strengthen workforce capability, and support outcome-based delivery.

In this role, you will:

• Lead the transformation of software engineering talent toward AI-native roles and ways of working, covering career pathing, reskilling, certifications, and capability development.
• Drive the adoption and diffusion of AI offerings, assets, toolkits, and accelerators across live client engagements, collaborating closely with sales, solutioning, and account management teams.
• Build and scale frontier delivery teams and capability communities, ensuring effective deployment of talent across both new and existing client opportunities.
• Own workforce planning, staffing, fulfilment, utilization, and talent mobility, partnering across a highly matrixed global organization to align capability supply with business demand.
• Lead and influence senior stakeholders to accelerate workforce transformation, AI adoption, and the shift toward scalable, outcome-based delivery models.
• Consistently model the Cognizant Way to Lead, including Personal Leadership (building trust, collaboration, and inclusion), Organizational Leadership (driving vision and purpose, demonstrating a strategic and enterprise mindset, and creating and communicating a bold direction that inspires purpose), and Business Leadership (demonstrating client focus, managing ambiguity with accountability and results, and operating with financial acumen)

What you need to have to be considered

• 20+ years of experience in IT services, including 12+ years leading talent, capability, workforce, or delivery organizations across large and complex global environments.
• Proven experience leading enterprise-scale workforce transformation, including career pathing, reskilling, certification, and transition toward AI or emerging-technology capabilities.
• Strong delivery and transformation leadership, with the credibility to drive changes in ways of working across live client accounts in collaboration with sales, solutioning, and delivery organizations.
• Demonstrated capability in managing workforce planning, staffing, fulfilment, utilization, bench, and talent mobility at significant scale.
• Strong understanding of Generative AI, Agentic AI, AI-native engineering roles, and emerging AI-enabled delivery models.
• Demonstrate the Cognizant Way to Lead: Leading Self, Leading Others, & Leading the Business
• Demonstrate Cognizant’s Values: Work as One, Dare to Innovate, Raise the Bar, Do The right Thing, & Own It

These will help you succeed

• Experience owning a large-scale workforce strategy or capability community of 2000-3000 professionals.
• Demonstrated ability to lead large, distributed talent populations through senior leadership layers and drive measurable capability transformation.
• Experience bringing new intellectual property, accelerators, or technology capabilities into live client environments and embedding them into delivery.
• Strong executive stakeholder management experience across business, sales, delivery, operations, HR, and technology organizations.
• Experience creating enterprise reskilling, certification, talent mobility, or AI capability programs that connect workforce transformation with business demand.