Major Incident Manager

We are seeking an enterprise-seasoned Major Incident Manager with a dedicated focus on Moveworks-driven issues within the ServiceNow platform. This is a proactive, high-ownership role for someone who is constantly ahead of the noise - identifying risk before it escalates, leading the organization through high-impact incidents with clarity, and ensuring no user is left waiting due to a process gap that could have been closed. You will be the central coordination point for major incidents, working directly with ServiceNow teams, Moveworks integration owners, and technical service owners to drive rapid resolution and thorough root cause analysis.

Salary and Other Compensation:

The annual salary for this position is between $77,000 to $85,000 depending on experience and other qualifications of the successful candidate.

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.

In this role, you will

Major Incident Management & Escalation Response

• Own all major incident escalations end-to-end - engage immediately, establish incident bridges, assign roles, and drive resolution in coordination with ServiceNow teams, Moveworks integration POCs, and service owners
• Gather full incident context (impact scope, affected systems, business criticality, event timeline) within ServiceNow and maintain accurate, timely stakeholder communications throughout the lifecycle
• Lead post-incident reviews (PIRs) to produce structured root cause analysis (RCA) documentation and track all corrective action items through to closure

ServiceNow Platform Oversight (Moveworks-Driven Issues)

• Monitor ServiceNow incident and interaction queues for Moveworks-driven escalations, ensuring AI-generated or bot-escalated issues receive immediate human engagement and do not stall
• Partner with ServiceNow and Moveworks integration POCs to tune escalation pathways, improve integration behavior, and identify automation gaps impacting incident flow
• Analyze ServiceNow ticket data originating from Moveworks interactions to surface trends, failure points, and user experience friction

Queue Health & Proactive Escalation Prevention

• Continuously monitor ServiceNow incident, request, and interaction queues - intervening on unassigned, stalled, or at-risk tickets, particularly those originating from Moveworks
• Enforce queue hygiene standards: SLA adherence, assignment accuracy, priority alignment, and escalation criteria within ServiceNow; coordinate with service owners to address workload gaps
• Build and maintain dashboards that provide real-time visibility into queue status, SLA performance, and escalation risk, including tracking of Moveworks-related incidents

Process Improvement & ITSM Governance

• Define and continuously refine major incident procedures, escalation runbooks, and communication templates aligned with ITIL best practices, with specific consideration for ServiceNow workflows and Moveworks integration behavior
• Manage a Problem Management pipeline from recurring incidents, including those originating from Moveworks interactions - ensuring root causes are tracked, known errors documented, and systemic issues resolved at scale
• Analyze incident trends and escalation patterns within ServiceNow, translating data into actionable recommendations for IT leadership, including improvements to Moveworks-to-ServiceNow workflows

Stakeholder Communication & Leadership Engagement

• Deliver clear executive-level communications during active incidents including business impact assessments, resolution timelines, and post-incident briefings, with clarity on Moveworks-related impact
• Facilitate PIR meetings with senior leadership, presenting RCA findings and corrective action roadmaps; build strong relationships across ServiceNow teams, Moveworks stakeholders, and business units

• 7+ years in IT Service Management with 3+ years in a dedicated Major Incident Manager or equivalent role
• Proven track record managing major incidents in large enterprise or Fortune 500 environments with complex, multi-team technology stacks
• Hands-on experience with enterprise ITSM platforms (ServiceNow, Jira Service Management, or equivalent); Moveworks experience strongly preferred
• Expert-level ITIL incident, problem, and change management knowledge - ITIL v4 certification strongly preferred
• Strong RCA methodology skills; able to produce structured, evidence-based root cause analysis under time pressure
• Natural leader under pressure - calm, decisive, and self-directed; does not wait to be told there is a problem
• Exceptional communicator across executive, technical, and business audiences; experienced with dashboards, SLA metrics, and incident trend data
• Familiarity with monitoring and observability tooling (Splunk, Datadog, PagerDuty, or equivalent) and enterprise SaaS/cloud environments

Preferred Skills

• Experience with ServiceNow-Moveworks integration, escalation flows, or AI-assisted ITSM operations
• ITIL v4 Managing Professional certification; ServiceNow advanced platform experience
• Experience in 24/7 enterprise NOC or global IT operations; familiarity with SRE and blameless postmortem practices
• Experience building or maturing a Major Incident Management function from the ground up

Benefits: 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
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan

Work model:

At Cognizant, we strive to provide flexibility wherever possible, and we are here to support a healthy work-life balance though our various wellbeing programs. Based on this role's business requirements, this is an onsite position requiring 5 days a week at a client location in Mountain View, CA, USA.

The working arrangements for this role are accurate as of the date of posting. This may change based on the project you're engaged in, as well as business and client requirements. Rest assured; we will always be clear about role expectations.