Technology services provider Cognizant announced a sweeping multi-pronged initiative to scale America’s artificial intelligence workforce, combining direct university graduate hiring, the creation of specialized AI job roles, a new national coalition, and an accelerated global skilling target.
Driven by company research estimating that AI could unlock $4.5 trillion in U.S. labor productivity and $1 trillion in economic value over the next decade, the strategy aims to establish domestic career pathways and ensure workers capture the economic advantages of emerging technologies.
As part of its push to build homegrown talent, Cognizant is on track to hire 1,500 U.S. college graduates this year, drawing from institutional partnerships alongside U.S. Department of Labor-registered apprenticeships.
To support these hires, the company is scaling a new professional job family—comprising Frontier Certified Engineers and Frontier Business Operators—to a combined 15,000 personnel. These roles focus on embedding AI capabilities into enterprise environments. The approach builds on existing partnerships with major AI platform providers, including thousands of certifications across Anthropic Claude and OpenAI Codex frameworks, alongside expanding Google Cloud Gemini Enterprise integrations.
Beyond internal hiring, Cognizant has joined RAISE US, a bipartisan national coalition launched by former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and former Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb. Designed to help workers navigate the transition into an AI-driven economy, the coalition aims to mobilize $1 billion for worker retraining, redeployment incentives, and learn-and-earn programs.
Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar S serves on the RAISE US Advisory Board alongside leadership from organizations including Amazon, Anthropic, Bank of America, IBM, Microsoft, and the OpenAI Foundation.
Additionally, Cognizant signed the White House’s Pledge to America’s Youth: Investing in Artificial Intelligence Education. The company also announced it has doubled the target for its global Synapse skilling initiative to reach two million people by 2030, following the early completion of its initial goal to train one million participants a full year ahead of schedule.
“We are hiring American graduates, standing up new American job categories for the AI era, and putting Cognizant’s capital and leadership behind a national coalition built to make sure this transition works for workers,” Ravi Kumar S, said.
