Senior Consulting Manager, Lead AI DevOps Engineer

About the role

This role involves designing, modernizing, and operationalizing enterprise-grade CI/CD and platform engineering capabilities that accelerate software and AI solution delivery. You will collaborate with client stakeholders, software engineering teams, platform teams, and AI engineering practitioners to improve deployment maturity, reliability, and innovation.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement scalable CI/CD pipelines across GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, and Jenkins environments to improve deployment reliability and speed.
• Establish modern software delivery practices including GitOps, Kubernetes-based deployment automation, Infrastructure as Code, progressive delivery, and observability frameworks.
• Partner directly with client and internal engineering teams to assess delivery maturity, implement best practices, and provide hands-on coaching that enables long-term success.
• Build and operationalize AI-enabled software delivery capabilities, including LLM evaluation pipelines, AI-assisted development workflows, agentic system deployment automation, and model governance controls.
• Develop reusable accelerators, reference architectures, playbooks, and platform templates that can be adopted across multiple consulting engagements.
• Work collaboratively with client and internal engineering teams to assess delivery maturity, implement best practices, and provide hands-on coaching that enables long-term success.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in software engineering, platform engineering, DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering, or related disciplines, including extensive experience designing and supporting production CI/CD environments.
• Deep expertise with GitHub Actions and hands-on experience with at least two additional enterprise CI/CD platforms such as GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, CircleCI, Buildkite, or Jenkins.
• Strong experience with Kubernetes, GitOps platforms (ArgoCD or Flux), Infrastructure as Code tools such as Terraform or Pulumi, and cloud-native deployment practices.
• Experience implementing observability solutions, including OpenTelemetry, distributed tracing, metrics collection, and DORA-based delivery measurement.
• Hands-on experience supporting AI/LLM-powered applications, evaluation pipelines, AI development tooling, or agent-based systems in enterprise environments.

Qualifications

• Experience developing automation and tooling using Python, including API integrations and workflow automation.
• Experience with progressive delivery technologies such as Argo Rollouts, Flagger, LaunchDarkly, or equivalent solutions.
• Familiarity with AI evaluation and governance frameworks such as Promptfoo, DeepEval, Ragas, LangSmith, Braintrust, or comparable solutions.
• Experience building reusable engineering accelerators, developer platforms, gold-path templates, and internal enablement programs.
• Consulting, advisory, or client-facing experience supporting complex enterprise transformation initiatives.

Skills

• Python
• GitHub Actions
• GitLab CI
• Azure DevOps
• CircleCI
• Buildkite
• Kubernetes
• GitOps platforms (ArgoCD or Flux)
• Terraform or Pulumi
• OpenTelemetry
• Distributed tracing
• Metrics collection
• Argo Rollouts
• Flagger
• LaunchDarkly
• AI evaluation and governance frameworks
• Progressive delivery technologies

Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision and life insurance
• 401(k) plan and contributions
• Employee stock purchase plan
• Employee assistance program
• 10 paid holidays plus PTO
• Paid parental leave and fertility assistance
• Learning and development certifications and programs

Pay

$98,853 - $152,750 per year

Schedule

This position requires 3 days a week in a client or Cognizant office in Chicago, Illinois. 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.