Software Engineering Manager

Job Description

Cognizant is one of the world's leading professional services companies, transforming clients business, operating, and technology models for the digital era. Our unique industry based, consultative approach helps clients envision, build, and run more innovative and efficient businesses. Headquartered in the United States, Cognizant a member of the NASDAQ 100 and one of Forbes Worlds Best Employers 2025 is consistently listed among the most admired companies in the world.

This role is part of Cognizant IOA Intelligent Operations and Automation, the division leading the transformation from traditional business process outsourcing to artificial intelligence powered operations. We combine human expertise with intelligent automation, machine learning operations, and digital experience solutions to help technology and digital native companies build smarter, more adaptive operating models.

What is the opportunity

We are looking for a Software Engineering Manager to join our fast growing Delivery Team. You will lead a team of engineers who design, build, and deliver high quality automation agents and software solutions for our customers. This role blends people leadership, engineering operational excellence, customer delivery oversight, and cross functional alignment.

You will be responsible for hiring and developing engineering talent, improving software development lifecycle practices, guiding delivery quality, supporting customer engagements, ensuring security and compliance, and collaborating across teams to support strategic growth.

This is a high impact leadership role for someone who enjoys scaling teams, improving engineering systems, and enabling predictable, high quality delivery.

What will you be doing

Your day‑to‑day responsibilities

People Management and Team Development

- Hire, onboard, coach, and retain engineers

- Run one to one meetings, performance reviews, and career development plans

- Monitor team morale, engagement, and burnout

Engineering Operations

- Implement and improve software delivery practices

- Monitor software development lifecycle performance metrics such as cycle time and DORA indicators

- Enforce code quality, testing, and definition of done standards

- Sponsor infrastructure improvements and technical debt reduction

- Lead or contribute to build versus buy, vendor, and tooling decisions

- Represent technical feasibility early during ideation with product managers

- Manage engineering vendors including billing, invoicing, seat allocation, and licensing

- When necessary, contribute as an individual contributor by reviewing code, writing code, or performing acceptance testing

Customer Delivery Operations

- Ensure delivery standards are met including timesheets, retrospectives, and required rituals

- Support the head of delivery with capacity planning, allocation, and prioritization including balancing technical debt with delivery commitments

- Act as technical escalation point for slow progress or blockers

- Validate technical feasibility such as assessing external APIs

Governance, Risks, and Compliance

- Define and maintain the security incident playbook including severity levels, escalation processes, and communication flows

- Define and socialize a secure software development lifecycle policy covering coding guidelines, branch protections, and review gates

- Embed security training into onboarding and ongoing refreshers

- Ensure vulnerabilities are addressed within established service level agreements

- Ensure teams follow company policies regarding intellectual property and access control

- Manage open source license usage and maintain the software bill of materials

Cross Functional Alignment and Strategic Leadership

- Participate in Delivery budget reviews

- Assess and propose adjustments to delivery capacity

You will know you are successful if

- You build and retain a strong, engaged engineering team with healthy morale

- You improve predictability, speed, and quality across delivery workflows

- You enforce security, compliance, and engineering excellence consistently

- You raise the bar on delivery outcomes through leadership, systems thinking, and operational discipline

- Customers and stakeholders see you as a reliable partner for technical leadership and delivery execution

What makes you a great fit

Must haves

Technically credible engineering background

- 3 years of experience in TypeScript or JavaScript development as an individual contributor

- Proficiency in the TypeScript and JavaScript ecosystem including code review and debugging

- Experience with Node.js and modern tooling such as npm or pnpm, ESLint, Jest or Vitest, and bundlers

- Ability to represent technical constraints and tradeoffs to customers and stakeholders

Delivery and Operations Management

- Experience in professional services, consulting, or customer delivery environments

- Experience managing multiple concurrent customer engagementsFamiliarity with delivery metrics such as utilization, cycle time, and capacity planning

- Ability to handle customer escalations and unblock technical challenges

- Experience with resource allocation and skills based staffing

- Experience improving delivery processes

People Management

- 1 year or more managing engineering teams beyond tech lead responsibilities

- Experience managing teams of 8 or more engineers ideally 10 to 20

- Experience hiring, onboarding, and retaining engineers

- Experience running structured performance reviews and career development conversations

- Ability to manage underperformance when required

- Experience managing distributed and remote teams

Good to Have

- Hands‑on experience building applications using large language model (LLM) APIs.

- Understanding of prompt‑engineering concepts such as few‑shot prompting and chain‑of‑thought techniques.

- Familiarity with AI failure modes, including hallucinations, context‑window limitations, and latency issues.

- Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

#J-18808-Ljbffr