Cognizant Launches Ace Team Program to Develop Cohort of AI Builders

Cognizant Launches Ace Team Program to Develop Cohort of AI Builders

High-impact career track for future AI builders who will drive the next phase of digital transformation

BENGALURU, India, June 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) today announced the launch of the Cognizant Ace Team Program, a strategic initiative designed to build a cohort of top engineering minds who will deliver cutting-edge digital transformation for clients and play a central role in the company's evolution into an AI builder organization.

The Cognizant Ace Team is structured as a combination of a selective hiring program, an elite talent pathway and a centrally governed engineering community aligned to Cognizant's advanced capability strategy.

The program is designed to build a community of high-potential engineers who will work on real client challenges using AI-native tools, modern architectures and outcome-driven methods. Ace Team members are expected to be deployed in focused, high-impact teams and be looked upon to get critical initiatives off the ground, contributing directly to pioneering and emerging technology solutions that drive meaningful business outcomes for clients.

With an India-focused launch, the Ace Team will serve as the cornerstone of Cognizant's shift into an AI builder organization, fueling transformation across the company's three-vector strategy of Hyperproductivity, Industrializing AI and Agentification through a high-caliber, AI-ready engineering force. The program is designed to enable the creation of high-value, niche AI offerings and support the execution of complex, large-scale technology initiatives, while accelerating innovation across the ecosystem. Its impact will include accelerating time to market, advancing end-to-end modernization and the development of future-ready platforms that support scale, reliability and sustained innovation.

Rajesh Varrier, President – Global Operations and Chairman & Managing Director, Cognizant India, said, "The launch of the Cognizant Ace Team program marks a critical step in strengthening our engineering depth as enterprises move rapidly from AI experimentation to real-world execution. Delivering measurable, scalable AI outcomes increasingly depends on AI-ready skills and strong engineering fundamentals. Through Ace Team, we are building a differentiated talent engine that directly supports our three-vector strategy of Hyperproductivity, Industrializing AI and Agentification, with the goal of enabling us to take AI from concepts to production and apply it at scale across industries."

Selection to the Cognizant Ace Team program is based on advanced technical competency, AI fluency and strong communication skills, rather than institution-based criteria. The multi-stage evaluation process includes communication assessment, aptitude assessment, technical assessment, and technical interviews and is designed to gauge industry-ready capabilities such as full-stack AI development, data structures and algorithms, prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, agentic AI and modern front-end development.

Selected candidates can be hired into differentiated roles with distinct career paths, deployment models and types of work. Ace Team members are expected to join as full-stack AI Engineers and begin contributing to real client engagements early in their journey, working on production codebases and building AI‑native capabilities including RAG pipelines, agentic workflows and LLM‑integrated applications across industries.

In its initial phase, the program is open to existing offer holders and select off-campus candidates, including Tier-1 institution pass-outs, with flexibility to expand further as required. Over time, Cognizant plans to broaden participation to include premium campuses, partner institutions, internal associates and laterals with one to three years of experience.

About Cognizant
Cognizant (Nasdaq: CTSH) is an AI Builder and technology services provider, bridging the gap between AI investment and enterprise value by building full-stack AI solutions for our clients. Our deep industry, process and engineering expertise enables us to build an organization's unique context into technology systems that amplify human potential, drive tangible outcomes and keep global enterprises ahead in a fast-changing world. See how at www.cognizant.ai or @cognizant. 

For more information, please contact:

Hema Swamy: Manimekalai.Swamy@cognizant.com

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