Service Manager

What makes Cognizant a unique place to work? The combination of rapid growth and an international and innovative environment! This is creating a lot of opportunities for people like YOU — people with an entrepreneurial spirit who want to make a difference in this world. At Cognizant, together with your colleagues from all around the world, you will collaborate on creating solutions for the world's leading companies and help them become more flexible, more innovative and successful.

Role Summary

The Service Manager is responsible for end‑to‑end ownership of application services for a global shipping client. The role includes service delivery governance, team leadership, vendor coordination, production stability, DevOps enablement, and continuous improvement across a complex application landscape. The position requires strong technical expertise, stakeholder management skills, and experience operating in a global onshore–offshore delivery model.

Key Roles & Responsibilities

Service Delivery & Client Relationship Management

• Own end‑to‑end service delivery for a portfolio of business‑critical applications within the shipping domain
• Act as the single point of contact for the client for application support, enhancements, and service improvements
• Ensure SLA, KPI, and contractual commitments are consistently met or exceeded
• Drive regular service governance meetings (weekly, monthly, quarterly reviews) with client stakeholders
• Proactively identify risks, escalations, and improvement opportunities within the application landscape

Application & Platform Ownership

• Maintain deep understanding of the client’s end‑to‑end application landscape, including dependencies, integrations, and data flows
• Provide functional and technical oversight of the core and all applications in scope
• Support and manage development and deployment through change Management
• Ensure application stability, performance, security, and compliance across environments

Production Support & Operations

• Lead L2/L3 production support activities, including incident, problem, and change management
• Coordinate and execute weekend and after‑hours deployments, release rollouts, and hotfixes
• Perform root cause analysis (RCA) for major incidents and drive permanent corrective actions
• Ensure proper monitoring, alerting, and operational readiness processes are in place

Team Leadership & Offshore Delivery Management

• Manage and mentor a team, including task allocation, performance reviews, and capability development
• Ensure effective collaboration between onsite (Sweden) and offshore (India) teams
• Drive continuous skill development and knowledge sharing within the team
• Support hiring, onboarding, and ramp‑up of new team members

Vendor & Stakeholder Management

• Coordinate activities across multiple client‑side and third‑party vendors
• Ensure clear ownership, accountability, and alignment across vendors
• Resolve inter‑vendor dependencies and delivery challenges
• Maintain strong working relationships with client IT, business teams, and external partners

DevOps, CI/CD & Automation

• Lead and support CI/CD implementation for all applications in scope
• Drive DevOps adoption including build, deployment, and release automation
• Collaborate with infrastructure and cloud teams for pipeline optimization
• Promote DevOps best practices, version control, and release standardization

Cloud & Modernization Initiatives

• Support client transformation initiatives by applying Azure cloud concepts
• Contribute to cloud migration, modernization, and API enablement projects
• Work closely with architects and platform teams to align legacy systems with cloud strategies

Compliance, Quality & Continuous Improvement

• Ensure adherence to Cognizant delivery standards, ITIL practices, and client governance models
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives to enhance service quality and operational efficiency
• Support audits, security reviews, and compliance requirements
• Contribute to transition activities, documentation, and service stabilization

Required Skills & Experience

• 15+ years of experience supporting enterprise applications in a service delivery or application management role
• Strong hands‑on experience with PowerBuilder and Oracle backend systems
• Lead requirement gathering and analysis, conduct requirement discussions for integration and enhancement projects, and translate business needs into technical solutions
• Perform solution designing and provide technical direction for application enhancements, integrations, and modernization initiatives
• Experience working with APIs and Azure API Management (APIM)
• Proven experience implementing CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices
• Strong experience in production support, incident management, and change management
• Experience working in onshore–offshore delivery models
• Strong stakeholder, vendor, and people management skills
• Exposure to Azure cloud concepts and modernization initiatives
• Willingness to support after‑hours/weekend deployments when required

Seniority & Value Positioning

• Long‑term client knowledge (15+ years) ensures continuity, reduced risk, and faster decision‑making
• Combination of legacy systems expertise + modern DevOps and Azure exposure
• Strong leadership capability bridging offshore teams and Nordic client expectations
• Proven ownership mindset aligned with managed services and application lifecycle accountability