Our Culture
Your passion, integrity and experience are integral to Cognizant's success. You will join a dynamic and expanding global leader in IT and Business consultancy where you will be valued for who you are. We take pride in our partnership with our clients, so your ability to add value and provide exceptional service to our clients is fundamental to your success. In return, you will be presented with opportunities to develop your career and collaborate with talented colleagues in a supportive, diverse environment.
At Cognizant we recognize that companies that are open and welcoming to a multi-culturally diverse workforce will thrive with fresh perspectives and collaborative knowledge. Cognizant focuses on promoting & increasing gender diversity and providing a workplace which encourages great participation and an equal playing field, where merit and accomplishment are the only criteria for success.
Job Summary
We are seeking an experienced Principal Data Architect professional to lead end‐to‐end migration from legacy systems to modern data platforms. The role involves defining migration strategy and architecture, overseeing execution, ensuring data quality and reconciliation, and managing cutover with minimal business disruption. The candidate will drive governance, handle high‐volume mission‐critical data, and provide leadership across teams to ensure successful, compliant, and efficient data transformation.
Roles & Responsibilities
* Define the overall Data Migration Architecture for Mainframe modernization programs
* Design scalable source‐to‐target data models, mapping legacy structures to modern platforms
* Establish migration patterns (big‐bang, phased, wave‐based, or domain‐wise)
* Drive data decomposition strategies for large and tightly coupled mainframe datasets
* Ensure architecture aligns with performance, security, audit, and compliance requirements
* Lead end‐to‐end data migration delivery across multiple pods / workstreams
* Oversee data extraction, transformation, loading (ETL/ELT) from Mainframe sources
* Govern batch sequencing, dependency management, restartability, and error handling
* Ensure zero or minimal business disruption during migration cycles
* Coordinate with application, testing, and infrastructure teams for integrated delivery
* Define and enforce data validation frameworks, including:
o Row counts & record balancing
o Control totals and hash reconciliations
o Referential integrity checks
o Business rule validations
* Own pre‐ and post‐migration reconciliation sign‐off
* Drive defect triage and root cause analysis for data discrepancies
* Ensure auditability and traceability across migration runs
* Plan and execute mock migrations and dress rehearsals
* Lead cutover planning, including rollback and contingency strategies
* Support parallel runs and controlled transition from Mainframe to target systems
* Work closely with business stakeholders to validate data correctness post go‐live
* Establish migration governance frameworks and reporting mechanisms
* Identify and mitigate data migration risks, including data loss, corruption, and performance bottlenecks
* Provide regular status, risk, and dependency updates to senior stakeholders
* Support client workshops on migration approach, risk posture, and readiness.
* Mentor migration architects, data engineers, and testing teams
* Drive best practices, accelerators, and reusable assets for Mainframe migration
* Contribute to future‐state data strategy beyond migration (modernization, analytics, optimization)
Skills Required
* Legacy Mainframe systems (COBOL, JCL, DB2, VSAM, IMS) and their data structures
* End‐to‐end legacy‐to‐target data migration covering extraction, transformation, validation, and reconciliation
* Migration of high‐volume, mission‐critical telecom data with strict SLAs and regulatory requirements
* Strong understanding of batch processing, file‐based data movement, and scheduling frameworks
* Experience migrating data to modern data platforms (Cloud DW, Lakehouse, Analytics platforms)
* Data quality, reconciliation, control totals, audit checks, and post‐migration assurance.
* Managing cutover, dress rehearsals, and parallel runs in large transformation programs
Benefits
* You can pursue innovative career tracks and opportunities here
* You can enhance your professional development through education and dedicated training
* We'll give you the skills you need to keep pace with the changing workplace while our compensation, benefits and wellness packages help you stay healthy and plan for the future.
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