Senior Service Delivery Manager

Location: Palm Beach, Florida (ONSITE)

Cognizant is looking for a Senior Service Delivery Manager to own the end-to-end performance and relationship for End User Services: Service Desk, Field Support, Endpoint Management, Hardware and Software Asset Management (HAM/SAM) and Major Incident Management (MIM). The incumbent will also lead service improvement and AI-led transformation, moving the customer from reactive support to a proactive, automated and experience-led model.

About Cognizant’s CIS Practice:

Cognizant’s CIS (Cognizant Infrastructure Services) Practice is a global leader in providing IT infrastructure services. We deliver innovative solutions to optimize and transform IT infrastructure, ensuring business agility and operational efficiency. Our services include cloud computing, data center management, network services, and cybersecurity. We focus on understanding client needs and delivering customized solutions to drive business success.

In this role, you will:

Customer relationship and stakeholder management

• Be the primary delivery contact for the customer's CIO, IT leadership and business heads; build trust at every level.
• Run governance with the customer: daily operations calls, weekly service reviews, monthly SLA/MBR and quarterly business reviews with data-based reporting.
• Handle escalations early and professionally; agree recovery plans with the customer and keep them informed until closure.
• Understand the customer's business priorities, projects and pain points; turn them into service plans and improvements.
• Represent the service in customer forums such as change boards, steering committees and audit meetings.
• Gather customer feedback (CSAT, sentiment, executive feedback) and act on it visibly.

Service delivery and governance

• Own SLA, KPI and OLA performance across all towers and explain results, risks and recovery plans clearly to the customer.
• Direct offshore and vendor teams: align priorities, run performance reviews, manage service credits, corrective action plans and contract compliance.
• Maintain a clear RACI and escalation path between customer teams, onsite staff, offshore delivery and vendors.
• Protect the customer experience while managing delivery risks, resource gaps and dependencies.

Operations excellence

• Deliver FCR, MTTR, CSAT, patch compliance and asset accuracy targets.
• Oversee workforce planning, attrition, skills and capacity across onsite and offshore teams.
• Apply ITIL practices (Incident, Problem, Change, Knowledge, Request) and integrate them with the customer's own processes and tools.

Major incident management

• Lead or oversee major incident bridges and the onsite response, including executive and business communication during the incident.
• Ensure RCA actions have owners and dates, and present RCA findings and prevention plans to customer leadership.
• Keep incident criteria, runbooks and communication templates current and agreed with the customer.

Endpoint, HAM and SAM

• Maintain endpoint compliance (for example 95%+ patch compliance) without disrupting business-critical devices.
• Keep asset data accurate across the CMDB, discovery, procurement and finance; work with the customer's finance and procurement teams.
• Lead vendor audit readiness and deliver measurable licence savings that the customer can verify.

Service improvement

• Maintain a CSI register with baselines, owners and measured benefits; review it with the customer.
• Use Lean, Six Sigma or similar methods to cut ticket volume, handling time and cost per ticket.
• Prioritise improvements by business value, effort and alignment with the customer's goals.

AI and digital transformation

• Lead the AI and automation roadmap with the customer: ticket routing, virtual agent, agent assist, knowledge generation and proactive remediation.
• Use DEX tools (for example Nexthink) to detect issues early and automate fixes.
• Build the business case and prove ROI: deflection, handle-time reduction, cost per ticket and adoption.
• Manage AI risks (privacy, hallucination, access control, compliance) with the customer's security and legal teams, and lead change management with customer staff and our teams.

People, commercial and account support

• Lead and develop onsite managers and team leads, and guide offshore leadership.
• Manage budget and unit costs (cost per ticket, device and user) and show year-on-year productivity.
• Support contract renewals, change requests and commercial discussions with the account lead; identify opportunities for new scope.
• Make sure our people follow the customer's security, safety and conduct policies while working on their premises.

What you’ll need to succeed:

• 15+ years in IT service delivery, with at least 5 years leading large multi-tower End User Services.
• Proven customer-facing delivery leadership in an outsourced or managed-services environment, ideally embedded at a customer site.
• Ownership of Service Desk plus at least two of Field Support, Endpoint, ITAM or MIM.
• Strong ITIL knowledge (ITIL v4 Foundation required; Managing Professional preferred).
• Hands-on experience with an ITSM platform (ServiceNow or similar) and an endpoint platform (Intune, SCCM, Jamf or Workspace ONE).
• A record of measurable improvement and automation, with specific numbers.
• Experience managing offshore teams and vendors against contracts and SLAs.
• Executive-level communication, negotiation and presentation skills; calm judgement under pressure.

Preferred

• Experience with Nexthink or other DEX tools, AIOps and AI-enabled service desk tools (virtual agent, Now Assist, Copilot).
• Certifications: ITIL 4 Managing Professional, PMP or Prince2, Lean Six Sigma, IAITAM (CHAMP or CSAM).
• Background in IT asset management and software audit management.
• Experience in global or regulated enterprises.

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.

Cognizant offers the following benefits for this position, subject to applicable eligibility requirements:

• Medical/Dental/Vision/Life Insurance
• Paid holidays plus Paid Time Off
• 401(k) plan and contributions
• Long-term/Short-term Disability
• Paid Parental Leave

Disclaimer: The salary, other compensation, and benefits information is accurate as of the date of this posting. Cognizant reserves the right to modify this information at any time, subject to applicable law.