Cognizant Staff Engineer salaries in India (Updated 2025)

Likes

Depends on your home manager, some are really supportive. 5-6 hours required from office (depends on the project), rest can be done from home, udemy access, cloud certifications

Dislikes

Salary is too low, only ceo earns good money, exploiting freshers and playing with their careers. They don't have many projects, so most of the time people will be on bench. Promotions are delayed/cancelled based on their convenience citing reasons like utilization is less (common sense- it is less because the company has less projects). Promotions criteria are increased if you satisfy previous required criteria. Hikes are less than peanuts. Company culture is bad, no festival celebration nothing. Work-life balance depends on the project; if you have a project, then you're overloaded with work and if you don't, you're overloaded with stress as they can terminate you anyday. FEW OF THE LATERAL HIREES ARE PUT ON BENCH AND LATER TERMINATED AFTER 6 MONTHS. JOIN ONLY IF YOU WANT TO WASTE YOUR TIME AND CAREER.

Likes

I have been learning new technologies since day one, so learning is never stopped for me after joining cognizant

Dislikes

Cognizant will not pay you well , Even if you are eligible for a better pay at the correct time they will release you from the project so that they don't have to promote you

Likes

Cognizant has strong capebilities in delivering technology services with a robust support. People are satisfied working here but since past couple of years company has not given ample opportunitiesto employees in terms of growth and compensastion

Dislikes

Not good approasal No timely appraisal No promotion policies No standard salary parameters as per exp No benchmarking for compensastion

Likes

If you swith to Cognizant, they will provide good salary compared to other service based company. They also push their associate for skill development with regular certification drive.

Dislikes

The appraisal system dropped drastically in couple of years. Very minimum salary hike with high ratings.

Likes

I joined Cognizant as a fresher and it’s a best place for starting your career. Culture is very good maybe because of company USA origin. I got good ratings for my hard work without any politics.

Dislikes

Salary and hike is low. Waiting period for promotion is so high even though if you have top year end rating.