Associate Director, Business Development

About The Role

As a Service Line Specialist – Data, AI & Analytics, you will make an impact by driving sales, business development and customer relationships for AI, Agentic AI, Analytics and Data solutions within the Life Sciences industry across the Benelux market, with a specific mandate to make Agentic AI adoption a differentiated growth lever. You will own the targets for the Artificial Intelligence & Analytics (AIA) service line across the Benelux Life Sciences market, spanning the pharma, biotech, MedTech and CRO/CDMO segments. You will be a valued member of the Benelux Life Sciences / AIA team and work collaboratively with sales, solutioning, delivery and partner teams, ecosystem partners and client executives.

About The Role

As a Service Line Specialist – Data, AI & Analytics, you will make an impact by driving sales, business development and customer relationships for AI, Agentic AI, Analytics and Data solutions within the Life Sciences industry across the Benelux market, with a specific mandate to make Agentic AI adoption a differentiated growth lever. You will own the targets for the Artificial Intelligence & Analytics (AIA) service line across the Benelux Life Sciences market, spanning the pharma, biotech, MedTech and CRO/CDMO segments. You will be a valued member of the Benelux Life Sciences / AIA team and work collaboratively with sales, solutioning, delivery and partner teams, ecosystem partners and client executives.

In this role, you will

• Drive revenue and Agentic AI growth: own the AIA service line sales targets across priority Benelux Life Sciences accounts, identify market gaps and growth opportunities, design penetration plans for new logos, and manage the full sales lifecycle from pipeline creation through conversion and closure, including fulfilment.
• Own and lead deals: direct the deal-pursuit process end to end with a focus on Agentic AI-led deals, multi-agent platform proposals and AI transformation programmes; position Cognizant's accelerators and platforms (agent-engineering frameworks, "Agent Foundry"-style accelerators); and lead complex, multi-stakeholder pursuits and commercial negotiations, engaging clients through workshops, demos and PoCs.
• Manage client relationships and act as a trusted advisor: maintain a regular cadence with key Life Sciences clients, advising CIO / CTO / CDO / CDIO and business leaders by translating Agentic AI capabilities into measurable business outcomes, ROI and operating-model change, and own the stakeholder-management map across key accounts as well as relationships with internal leaders.
• Develop the Benelux GTM strategy, sales plays and offering commercialisation: define the service line vision and roadmap, build and execute the Agentic AI GTM (industry plays, messaging and repeatable solutions), package enterprise-ready offerings (agent-engineering frameworks, multi-agent workflows, orchestration, monitoring), and deliver at
  - or above-market revenue growth with strong forecasting discipline and pipeline hygiene.
• Own alliances, responsible-AI governance and thought leadership: establish and grow strategic alliances with hyperscalers and Agentic AI / GenAI platform partners (Microsoft, AWS, Google, Anthropic, OpenAI) to create joint pipeline and co-sell motions; ensure pursuits incorporate responsible AI, compliance and governance with sensitivity to the Life Sciences regulatory context (EU AI Act, GxP, data privacy); and position Cognizant's AIA expertise with analysts and through thought leadership.

Work model

At Cognizant, we strive to provide flexibility wherever possible. Based on this role's business requirements, this is a hybrid position requiring 2 days a week in a client or Cognizant office in Benelux. Regardless of your working arrangement, we are here to support a healthy work-life balance through our various wellbeing programs.
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.

What You Need To Have To Be Considered

• Deep experience in enterprise technology consulting / services sales (or equivalent), with ownership of large / complex pursutions and executive stakeholders
• Demonstrated experience selling AI / GenAI / Agentic AI or adjacent solutions (data platforms, automation, cloud transformation) with credible business-outcome positioning.
• Strong consultative selling and commercial acumen: structuring deals, value cases and multi-year programmes, with working knowledge of agentic concepts (orchestration, tools, memory/state, evaluation, observability and governance).
• Awareness of data, traditional BI and cloud architectures across multiple analytics platforms and domains, plus EU