Job description

Primary Responsibilities • Define and drive the lift-and-shift migration strategy, roadmap, migration factory approach, and execution plan across all migration waves. • Review and validate discovery outputs, workload classifications, dependency mapping, and migration wave plans to ensure migration readiness. • Own end-to-end migration delivery governance from a Cognizant perspective, covering scope, schedules, milestones, risks, dependencies, and quality objectives. • Provide hands-on technical leadership and architectural guidance for AWS target environments, including compute, storage, networking, security, and operational readiness. • Coordinate closely with client SMEs, AWS ProServe, application owners, infrastructure teams, database teams, and Cognizant offshore migration pods. • Lead migration wave planning, readiness reviews, cutover planning, execution oversight, and go-live activities. • Act as the primary escalation point for migration-related technical challenges, deployment issues, cutover risks, and cross-functional dependencies. • Drive status reporting, risk management, issue management, and executive stakeholder communications, ensuring alignment across all participating teams. • Ensure migration quality, runbook compliance, performance validation, rollback readiness, and operational acceptance across all migration waves. • Support troubleshooting and resolution of issues related to migrated servers, operating systems, databases, network connectivity, security controls, and application dependencies. • Oversee migration factory operations, including migration tooling, automation processes, workload tracking, and migration execution governance. • Ensure adherence to security, compliance, audit, and regulatory requirements throughout the migration lifecycle. Secondary Responsibilities • Validate landing zone, connectivity, account structure, security controls, and environment readiness with client and AWS teams. • Review and approve migration runbooks, SOPs, cutover plans, rollback procedures, and migration best practices. • Guide and mentor migration engineers and offshore migration teams during planning, execution, and stabilization phases. • Support testing coordination, defect resolution, business validation activities, and hypercare stabilization following migrations. • Drive automation adoption through migration factory tooling, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), scripting, and operational efficiencies. • Coordinate dependency management across infrastructure, application, network, database, security, and operations teams. • Facilitate knowledge transfer and transition of migrated workloads to operations and managed services teams. • Participate in governance reviews, architecture discussions, milestone assessments, and executive reporting activities. • Support continuous improvement initiatives by identifying opportunities to optimize migration processes, tooling, and delivery models. • Ensure migration documentation, execution records, lessons learned, and operational handoff artifacts are completed and maintained. Required Skills & Experience • Strong experience leading large-scale VMware, physical server, and cloud migration programs. • Proven experience managing migration factories, migration waves, cutover activities, and workload modernization initiatives. • Deep understanding of AWS infrastructure services, networking, security, identity management, and operational best practices. • Experience with migration tooling such as AWS Application Migration Service (MGN), Cloud Migration Factory (CMF), AWS Transform, and related migration technologies. • Strong knowledge of Windows and Linux server platforms, networking, storage, and enterprise infrastructure environments. • Experience coordinating infrastructure, application, database, security, and operations teams in complex migration engagements. • Strong troubleshooting, risk management, stakeholder management, and delivery governance skills. • Excellent communication skills with the ability to interact effectively with executives, technical teams, and client stakeholders. • Experience supporting regulated, government, or highly governed environments is preferred. • AWS Certifications and migration-related certifications are highly desirable.

Requirements

Must-haves

Define and drive the lift-and-shift migration strategy, roadmap, migration factory approach, and execution plan across all migration waves.
Review and validate discovery outputs, workload classifications, dependency mapping, and migration wave plans to ensure migration readiness.
Own end-to-end migration delivery governance from a Cognizant perspective, covering scope, schedules, milestones, risks, dependencies, and quality objectives.
Provide hands-on technical leadership and architectural guidance for AWS target environments, including compute, storage, networking, security, and operational readiness.
Coordinate closely with client SMEs, AWS ProServe, application owners, infrastructure teams, database teams, and Cognizant offshore migration pods.
Lead migration wave planning, readiness reviews, cutover planning, execution oversight, and go-live activities.
Act as the primary escalation point for migration-related technical challenges, deployment issues, cutover risks, and cross-functional dependencies.
Drive status reporting, risk management, issue management, and executive stakeholder communications, ensuring alignment across all participating teams.
Ensure migration quality, runbook compliance, performance validation, rollback readiness, and operational acceptance across all migration waves.
Support troubleshooting and resolution of issues related to migrated servers, operating systems, databases, network connectivity, security controls, and application dependencies.
Oversee migration factory operations, including migration tooling, automation processes, workload tracking, and migration execution governance.
Ensure adherence to security, compliance, audit, and regulatory requirements throughout the migration lifecycle.
Secondary Responsibilities
Validate landing zone, connectivity, account structure, security controls, and environment readiness with client and AWS teams.
Review and approve migration runbooks, SOPs, cutover plans, rollback procedures, and migration best practices.
Guide and mentor migration engineers and offshore migration teams during planning, execution, and stabilization phases.
Support testing coordination, defect resolution, business validation activities, and hypercare stabilization following migrations.
Drive automation adoption through migration factory tooling, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), scripting, and operational efficiencies.
Coordinate dependency management across infrastructure, application, network, database, security, and operations teams.
Facilitate knowledge transfer and transition of migrated workloads to operations and managed services teams.
Participate in governance reviews, architecture discussions, milestone assessments, and executive reporting activities.
Support continuous improvement initiatives by identifying opportunities to optimize migration processes, tooling, and delivery models.
Ensure migration documentation, execution records, lessons learned, and operational handoff artifacts are completed and maintained.

Nice-to-haves

Experience supporting regulated, government, or highly governed environments is preferred.

Application prep

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Keywords to mirror

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