AI Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE)

About the role

We are looking for a highly skilled and consultative AI Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) to help clients understand, shape, and activate the potential of AI in their business. This role partners closely with sales, industry specialists, engineering, and clients to turn priority AI use cases into MVPs, POCs, and commercially strong solutions that accelerate deal conversion. You will sit at the intersection of AI technology, solution architecture, and business value, guiding clients from early-stage ideation through to validated solution designs. This is a hands-on, high-impact role suited for a technical expert who thrives in ambiguous, fast-moving sales cycles.

Responsibilities

• Drive early-stage discovery sessions with clients and account teams.
• Identify pain points, value levers, and high-impact AI opportunities.
• Build “North Star” AI scenarios that illustrate meaningful business transformation.
• Translate vague or complex client questions into clear solution hypotheses and initial architectural logic.
• Design AI solutions by putting together the main components (LLMs, data sources, integrations) under guidance from senior engineers.
• Build prototypes, storyboards, demos, accelerators and reusable agentic blueprints.
• Engineer & validate AI agents for reliability, reasoning, safety, and performance.
• Lead PoCs, pilots, and phase-0 MVPs across industries.
• Create compelling, client-ready content: SoWs, proposals, architecture decks, value frameworks, and demo storylines.
• Lead technical walkthroughs, deep-dives, and competitive differentiation discussions.
• Refined solution narratives based on client feedback and market conditions.
• Oversee seamless transition from sales to delivery, ensuring continuity and clarity.

Requirements

• Hands-on experience to Google ADK or CoPilot Studio in building AI Agents (or any tool such as CrewAI, Autogen for building agents).
• Hands-on working knowledge in defining and configuring prompts, instructions, tools, reasoning, guardrails and other similar concepts in AI Agent development.
• Strong experience with RAG pipelines, Vector DBs, tokenization, and prompt engineering.
• Very strong experience with developing RESTful APIs in Python using frameworks like FastAPI and integrate third-party services, UI components and APIs.
• Own end-to-end architecture: LLM selection, context engineering, microservices, integrations, and UI.
• Build prototypes, storyboards, demos, accelerators, and reusable agentic blueprints.
• Engineer & validate AI agents for reliability, reasoning, safety, and performance.
• Lead PoCs, pilots, and phase0 MVPs across industries.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree or Equivalent Experience.

Skills

• Strong communication skills and articulation skills.

Benefits

• The annual salary for this position is between $140,000-$200,000 depending on experience and other qualifications of the successful candidate.
• This position is also eligible for Cognizant’s discretionary annual incentive program and stock awards, based on performance and subject to the terms of Cognizant’s applicable plans.
• Cognizant offers the following benefits for this position, subject to apply:
  • 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

Pay

The annual salary for this position is between $140,000-$200,000 depending on experience and other qualifications of the successful candidate.

Schedule

This is a hybrid position in New Jersey requiring 3-4 days a week in a client or Cognizant office. Based on this role’s business requirements.