AI - Artificial Intelligence Strategist
Location: US/East Coast & Central Time Zones
Manager level
About the Role
The AI Strategist plays a pivotal role in shaping Cognizant’s AI portfolio by designing high impact AI use cases, building compelling value propositions, and enabling early-stage client engagement. Sitting at the intersection of business design, AI capability, and industry needs, this role transforms opportunity spaces into structured, scalable, commercially strong AI offerings that drive growth for the AI Market Unit. This role is ideal for a product-minded consultant or solution designer who can blend conceptual thinking, business acumen, and AI literacy to build differentiated offerings that win in the market. Minded consultant or solution designer who can blend conceptual thinking, business acumen, and AI literacy to build differentiated offerings that win in the market.
Key Responsibilities
1. Value Proposition Development & Collateral Creation
- Build business value frameworks, impact models, and client-ready point of view documents of view documents.
- Create reusable offering assets including pitch decks, one-pagers, POVs, demo scripts, and solution differentiators.
- Align offerings with market demand, competitive insights, and Cognizant’s internal capability landscape.
2. Client & Internal Engagement
- Partner with clients, sales teams, ISLs, consulting, and pre‑sales in early discovery phases.
- Lead ideation sessions and offer walkthroughs to surface use cases and refine solution approaches.
- Support pursuit teams with value narratives, offering insights, and strategic justification for AI-led transformation programs.
Business Solutions & Use Case Design
- Own conceptual and architectural design for prioritized AI use cases and offerings.
- Translate business problems, industry signals, and AI capabilities into structured solution blueprints.
- Develop narratives, workflows, and design artifacts that illustrate the “art of the possible” and competitive differentiation.
Decision Rights
Owns
- Contribution to the sales strategy, value engineering, and opportunity delivery.
- Solutions qualification and readiness criteria for GTM launch or client presentations.
- Accountability for successful AI driven proposals, solutions and
- Internal and client facing presentations, competitive research and analysis
Influences
- GTM and market positioning for AI offerings.
- Field enablement through playbooks, kits, and value selling tools.
- Engineering decisions to ensure offerings are scalable and deployment ready.
Key Performance Indicators
- Contribution to deal closure
- Presented and sold AI opportunities, solutions, offerings
- Total contract value (TCV).
Stakeholder Interactions
Internal
- AI Business & Design Leadership
- Presales Specialists
- Client partners, CRMs.
- AI Specialist Sales
- Service Line & Business Unit Heads
External
- Business Owners / Functional Leaders (Supply Chain, Finance, CX/CRM, Healthcare Ops)
- Product Managers
- Data Science & Analytics Teams
- IT & Enterprise Architecture Teams
- Cloud & Platform Engineering Teams
- Operations & Transformation Leaders
- Security & Compliance Teams
Experience Required
- 5–10 years in consulting, solution design, digital/AI strategy, or product/experience design.
- Proven experience framing business problems and structuring AI or digital solutions.
- Exposure to AI platforms, GenAI toolchains, and industry specific AI use specific cases.
- Strong commercial acumen and ability to tie technology to business value.
- Demonstrated stakeholder management and cross functional collaboration.
Key Competencies
- Business storytelling and narrative building for executive audiences.
- Strong conceptual and structured problem-solving skills.
- Ability to blueprint solutions and articulate complex ideas simply.
- Ability to work seamlessly with sales, engineering, consulting, and product teams.
- Understanding of AI/ML concepts at a business technical level (not necessarily hands on technical).
Salary and Other Compensation:
Applications will be accepted until April 15, 2026.
The annual base salary for this position is between $120,000 - $135,000 depending on the 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.
Benefits: Cognizant offers the following benefits for this position, subject to applicable eligibility requirements:
- 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
Disclaimer: The salary, other compensation, and benefits information is accurate as of the date of this posting. Cognizant reserves the right to modify this information at any time, subject to applicable law.
ertified Product Manager Machine Learning Certification CRM-Sales Certification
The Cognizant community:
We are a high caliber team who appreciate and support one another. Our people uphold an energetic, collaborative and inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive.
- Cognizant is a global community with more than 300,000 associates around the world.
- We don’t just dream of a better way – we make it happen.
- We take care of our people, clients, company, communities and climate by doing what’s right.
- We foster an innovative environment where you can build the career path that’s right for you.
About us:
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 U.S., Cognizant (a member of the NASDAQ-100 and one of Forbes World’s Best Employers 2025) is consistently listed among the most admired companies in the world. Learn how Cognizant helps clients lead with digital at www.cognizant.com
Cognizant is an equal opportunity employer. Your application and candidacy will not be considered based on race, color, sex, religion, creed, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, veteran status or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.
Disclaimer:
Compensation information is accurate as of the date of this posting. Cognizant reserves the right to modify this information at any time, subject to applicable law.
Applicants may be required to attend interviews in person or by video conference. In addition, candidates may be required to present their current state or government issued ID during each interview.