Distinguished Field Solutions Engineer Leading at Cognizant
This is a Leadership role at Cognizant. We believe how you lead is as important as what you deliver. About the Role
As a Distinguished Field Solutions Engineer, you will make an impact by serving as the senior technical leader for Cognizant AI Platforms and driving technical wins across enterprise pursuits.
The Distinguished Field Solutions Engineer (Distinguished FSE) is the senior technical anchor of an enterprise platform deal — an intensely client-facing and market-facing role at the front line of our go-to-market motion, engaging clients directly and championing our platforms in the market.
The FSE sits alongside account and sales teams to translate a client's engineering, AI, cloud and operations challenges into a credible, demonstrable solution built on our platforms.
The FSE owns the technical win: discovery, architecture fit, demos, proofs of concept, and the technical narrative that carries a deal from first conversation to signed commercial model.
Sales and commercial outcomes follow as a by-product of the mindshare and client confidence the FSE earns, rather than from direct selling.
Beyond the core technical-win role, the Distinguished FSE is also expected to:
Shape the direction of our platforms, and provide direction and oversight to the Product Managers in Platform Engineering.
Anticipate technology trends and client needs, keeping the portfolio ahead of the market.
Lead and grow the India-based PoC and Demo team.
Set the global standard for demos and coach demo teams worldwide.
Drive sales and adoption across our go-to-market teams.
Publish communications and success stories that build market momentum.
Provide mindshare across AI Platforms and to senior levels within the firm. In This Role, You Will
Lead technical strategy, influence platform roadmap, build PoC and Demo teams, and represent Cognizant in client and industry engagements.
Partners with sales, account and professional services teams as the technical lead on enterprise platform pursuits, owning the technical win from qualification to close.
Runs technical discovery to understand a client's engineering, AI, cloud and operations landscape, and maps their outcomes to the right platform or combination of platforms.
Designs and presents solution architectures that show how our platforms integrate with the client's existing tooling, hyperscaler footprint and ecosystem partners.
Builds and delivers compelling, tailored demonstrations and drives proofs of concept and readiness assessments that de-risk adoption and prove value.
Articulates the commercial and delivery value of platforms — including chargeback, managed-services and outcome-based models — and helps quantify productivity, cost and time-to-market benefits.
Responds to the technical sections of RFPs, RFIs and bid processes, and shapes proposals with credible, defensible solutioning.
Represents the platforms at industry events and conferences (e.g. AWS re: Invent, Google Next, Microsoft Ignite) and in cloud-marketplace and partner motions.
Champions the platforms in the market — building client mindshare and establishing Cognizant as a leading software firm and our platforms as best-in-class software.
Serves as the voice of the field into the platform roadmap — capturing recurring client requirements and field feedback, prioritizing them with our Platform Engineering teams, and shaping where the platforms go next; then takes new capabilities and releases back to clients and the field to drive adoption.
Acts as a primary stakeholder to the Product Managers within Platform Engineering — providing direction and oversight on priorities, requirements and release decisions so the roadmap reflects field and client reality.
Hands off to our implementation teams and Forward Deployed Engineers for delivery, protecting adoption and reducing churn once a platform is adopted.
Identifies opportunities to leverage our Forward Deployed Engineers to drive platform adoption across the client's estate, driving outcomes and creating value for clients.
Leads, grows and manages a team of PoC and Demo specialists in India — hiring, coaching, developing talent, managing performance and planning capacity across concurrent pursuits — and mentors FSEs to scale the technical go-to-market motion.
Defines demo needs and tailors demonstrations for specific audiences — from hands-on engineers to C-suite buyers — so each story lands with the right depth and messaging.
Trains and coaches our demo teams globally on how to deliver demonstrations and the messaging that goes with them, raising demo quality across the firm.
Works continuously across our Commercial, Delivery, Marketing and Solution Architect teams to improve the sales velocity and adoption of the platforms.
Publishes timely communications and success stories — client wins, case studies, new releases and platform achievements — to build mindshare internally and in the market.
Observes technology trends and evolving client needs, and anticipates which trends our platforms should address proactively — keeping the portfolio ahead of the market.
Provides mindshare across AI Platforms leadership — including regular, direct briefings to senior levels within the firm — on field insight, client needs and platform direction. What You Need to Have to Be Considered
20+ years of software, AI, cloud or engineering experience with strong client-facing leadership and people management skills.
A senior software or platform product engineer — for example an advisory/solutions engineer, developer advocate or solution architect for a software product, who has moved decisively into a client-facing technical go-to-market leadership role; experience in software products is valued over IT-services.
On that foundation, 20-25 years in software, AI, digital and cloud engineering — including 7+ years in advisory-led technical conversations on software products and platforms with senior client engineers and architects and C-suite technology leaders (CTO, CDO, CIO, CAIO).
Proven people-leadership experience — building, managing and developing technical teams (ideally PoC, demo, presales or solutions-engineering teams), with the maturity to lead a technical team in India across concurrent, high-stakes pursuits.
A product mindset — demonstrated ability to shape product roadmaps, prioritize competing requirements and translate field feedback into product direction, without needing a formal product-management title.
Minimum 2+ years hands-on across the AI-infused Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) — modern engineering and DevSecOps, legacy and cloud modernization for AI readiness, AI assurance (quality testing and performance-drift monitoring) and run operations (SRE / AIOps) — and the Agent Development Lifecycle (ADLC), building agentic and gen-AI solutions with large language and performance-optimized small language models.
Working knowledge of our key partner ecosystems — hyperscalers (AWS, Microsoft, Google) and AI-native providers (Anthropic, OpenAI, NVIDIA) — and the surrounding AI/engineering tooling (LLM providers, orchestration frameworks, CI/CD and observability).
Excellent communication and storytelling — able to build and deliver demos, and to write and publish crisp communications and success stories, that translate technical capability into clear business outcomes.
Comfort operating in ambiguity, managing multiple pursuits, and collaborating across our Commercial, Delivery, Marketing and Communications, Platform Engineering, Demo and Workshops, Solution Architect and implementation/Forward Deployed Engineering teams.
Willingness to travel to client sites, studios and industry events as required. These Will Help You Succeed
Hyperscaler certifications, SaaS/PaaS platform experience, product strategy exposure, and marketplace/co-sell experience.
