AI Engineer - Azure

Build and operate production-grade generative AI systems on Microsoft Azure, with ownership across RAG, agentic workflows, evaluation, and monitored deployments. This onsite role in Washington, DC offers a competitive salary range of $110,000–$135,000, plus eligibility for Cognizant’s discretionary annual incentive program.

You will design end-to-end AI solutions that prioritize quality, reliability, and responsible AI, using modern orchestration and observability tooling, and deploying services through CI/CD with containerization.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement end-to-end RAG pipelines, including data ingestion, embedding generation, vector database management, and retrieval optimization.
• Develop and maintain APIs to orchestrate RAG workflows, covering retrieval, prompt handling, and model interaction.
• Build orchestration and multi-step reasoning workflows using Semantic Kernel, LangChain, or LangGraph, incorporating tool use and memory.
• Integrate LLMs such as Azure OpenAI and tune prompts to balance accuracy, performance, and cost.
• Implement observability, monitoring, and evaluation using LangSmith and Azure monitoring tools to track output quality, latency, and hallucination rates.
• Troubleshoot and improve retrieval quality, grounding accuracy, and response relevance.
• Deploy and manage AI services on Azure using CI/CD pipelines and containerization.
• Build and maintain scalable web applications using Python, Node.js, and React.
• Apply responsible AI practices using guardrails, security controls, and compliance standards.

Requirements

• Hands-on Python experience for backend services and automation.
• Hands-on experience with LangChain and/or LangGraph.
• Experience with RAG, embeddings, and vector search.
• Hands-on experience with Azure OpenAI and Azure AI Search.
• Proficiency with REST APIs, JSON, and Git.

Benefits

• 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

Nice to Have

• JavaScript experience (React, Node.js)
• Docker and container-based deployments
• Experience with Azure services such as Azure Container Apps or AKS, Azure Functions, Azure Monitor/Application Insights, and Key Vault

Salary and Other Compensation

The annual salary for this position is $110,000–$135,000 depending on experience and other qualifications of the successful candidate. This position is also eligible for Cognizant’s discretionary annual incentive program, based on performance and subject to the terms of Cognizant’s applicable plans.