Cognizant has begun one of the most closely watched restructuring efforts in Indian IT services this year. Branded internally as "Project Leap," the plan marks a deliberate shift away from the labour-heavy delivery model that built the company's workforce of more than 357,000 people — over 250,000 of them in India — toward a leaner, AI-and-platform-driven structure.
Cognizant's initial disclosure put the cuts at roughly 4,000 roles, about 1% of its global workforce, with $230–320 million set aside for the program: $200–270 million in severance and personnel costs plus $30–50 million in other restructuring charges. Within days, Indian business outlets including Business Today and The Week reported the real number under internal consideration was much larger — estimates ranging from 7,000 to 15,000 jobs globally, with India absorbing the bulk given its share of the workforce.
What makes Project Leap different from a straightforward layoff round is the company's parallel commitment to hire more than 20,000 freshers in 2026. Read together, the two numbers point to a workforce reshuffle rather than simple downsizing: Cognizant appears to be trimming experienced delivery staff tied to older engagement models while bringing in early-career talent trained from day one on AI-augmented and platform-based ways of working. It is a pattern increasingly visible across Indian IT majors — shrink the middle, protect the entry point, and rebuild around newer skill sets.
For employees in traditional delivery, QA, or support roles built around legacy engagement models, this is a signal to treat reskilling as urgent rather than optional. Cloud platforms, AI-assisted development tools, and exposure to agentic or automation workflows are quickly becoming baseline expectations rather than differentiators at firms restructuring around them.
For freshers and early-career candidates, the picture is more encouraging: large-scale fresher hiring is continuing even as experienced headcount shrinks, which means campus and early-career pipelines remain a real entry point into these companies if you can show familiarity with current tools rather than only academic fundamentals.
Cognizant has not confirmed the higher 7,000–15,000 figure as final, and the company's own messaging frames Project Leap as a strategic reset rather than a crisis response. If you are at Cognizant or a comparable IT-services employer, the practical move is the same regardless of the exact final number: document your current project's business impact, get ahead of internal reskilling programs rather than waiting to be assigned to one, and keep your resume and LinkedIn profile current so you are not scrambling if your team is affected.