Distinguished Frontier Engineer (M/F/D) in Karlsruhe

About the role

As a Distinguished Frontier Engineer (M/F/D), you'll help shape the future of enterprise AI. As the senior technical leader who designs the enterprise-scale AI systems behind Cognizant's most complex client transformations, you'll define human-agent capability matrices, author guardrail specifications, lead client architecture workshops, and own the intellectual design of AI delivery at scale, spanning cross-domain, cross-platform and cross-sector work.

From responsible-AI governance to regulated decisioning systems, you'll set the standard rather than meeting it. Partnering with senior client stakeholders, AI leaders and Frontier teams across industries and geographies, you'll establish the frameworks, guardrails and architectural patterns that enable organizations to confidently adopt AI at scale, while technically leading cohorts of Frontier Engineers and Masters and mentoring the next generation of Frontier talent.

In this role, you will

• Design AI-native enterprise architectures and define human-agent capability matrices for delivery programmes.
• Author guardrail specifications and boundary documentation for agentic systems at enterprise scale.
• Lead client architecture review workshops and produce context-pipeline blueprints.
• Govern ADLC adoption across the portfolio and define standards for AI-generated code quality.

• Architect responsible-AI frameworks, including bias detection, explainability and audit-trail design.
  

Work model

We believe hybrid work is the way forward as we strive to provide flexibility wherever possible. Based on this role's business requirements, this is a hybrid position requiring 3 days a week in a client or Cognizant office in Germany. Regardless of your working arrangement, we are here to support a healthy work-life balance through our various wellbeing programs.

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. Rest assured; we will always be clear about role expectations.

What you must have to be considered

• 12-20 years of experience with enterprise AI architecture leadership.
• Deep expertise in AI-native enterprise architecture and context-pipeline architecture at scale.
• Strong background in guardrail specification and responsible-AI framework design, including regulated AI decisioning.
• Experience with ADLC delivery governance and cross-platform AI integration strategy.
• Skills in frontier-model evaluation and red-teaming, AIOps orchestration architecture and human-agent capability modelling.

These will help you succeed

• Enterprise AI architecture leadership paired with responsible-AI and guardrail design expertise.
• ADLC governance and standards experience across large portfolios.
• Technical leadership and advisory strength, including leading client architecture workshops.
• AI quality and evaluation design capability across agentic systems.
• Domain fluency, contextual judgment and a strong business-outcome orientation.