How To Become A Senior Cognos Developer: What It Is and Career Path

What is a senior cognos developer and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a senior cognos developer. For example, did you know that they make an average of $48.73 an hour? That's $101,368 a year! Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 21% and produce 284,100 job opportunities across the U.S.

ScoreSenior Cognos DeveloperUS Average

Salary

7.6

Avg. Salary $101,368

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

4.0

Growth rate 21%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

4.0

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.17%

Asian 30.29%

Black or African American 4.69%

Hispanic or Latino 8.46%

Unknown 4.87%

White 51.52%

Gender

female 29.79%

male 70.21%

Age - 38

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 38

Stress level

4.0

Stress level is moderate

7.1 - high

Complexity level

7.9

Complexity level is challenging

7 - challenging

Work life balance

6.6

Work life balance is good

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a senior cognos developer

Explore senior cognos developer education requirements

Most common senior cognos developer degrees

Bachelor's

73.1 %

Master's

25.0 %

Diploma

1.1 %

Start to develop specific senior cognos developer skills

Skills	Percentages
Board Reports	7.74%
Data Warehouse	5.55%
SQL Server	5.44%
Drill-Through	4.85%
Cognos BI	4.38%

Complete relevant senior cognos developer training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 3-6 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New senior cognos developers learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a senior cognos developer based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real senior cognos developer resumes.

Research senior cognos developer duties and responsibilities

Introduce and develop OLAP dimensional analysis and eventually lead the transition of reporting from relational to dimensional.
Create and design DTS packages (SSIS) used for implementing the schema for the required data mart.
Work along with the ETL team to understand the flow of data from OLTP system to the OLAP system.
Tweak the Java scripts in reports to support for Cognos10.1.

Get senior cognos developer experience

Generally, it takes 2-4 years to become a senior cognos developer. The most common roles before becoming a senior cognos developer include cognos developer, developer team lead and cognos consultant.

Prepare your senior cognos developer resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your senior cognos developer resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a senior cognos developer resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable senior cognos developer resume templates

Build a professional senior cognos developer resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your senior cognos developer resume.