Vice President, Chief Technology Officer

Why Wellmark: We are a mutual insurance company owned by our policy holders across Iowa and South Dakota, and we’ve built our reputation on over 80 years’ worth of trust. We are not motivated by profits. We are motivated by the well-being of our friends, family, and neighbors–our members. If you’re passionate about joining an organization working hard to put its members first, to provide best-in-class service, and one that is committed to sustainability and innovation, consider applying today 

Why Wellmark Technology? Wellmark is building innovative, modern solutions using cutting edge technology. We are driving organizational transformation and business strategy by empowering our technology team to innovate new and elegant solutions to enhance the customer experience. Together, we are leaning into the future, owning the outcome, and driving organizational change to transform how we work.

As the Vice President, Chief Technology Officer you will define and provide leadership, strategic direction, and oversight of Wellmark’s Technology Strategy in collaboration with the Chief Information Officer. You will have the opportunity to provide direct leadership and delivery of enterprise technology platforms and architecture, enterprise data assets, enterprise API platforms, and enterprise cloud to advance the technology strategy, create operating leverage and competitive advantage for Wellmark.  You will lead and oversee Wellmark’s technology products and delivery functions, including the engineering and delivery of innovative, transformational IT products in alignment with the organization’s strategic goals and objectives. Also, you are responsible for the operational partnership between Technology and the company regarding the delivery and operations of IT products and platforms that generate operating leverage and scale advantages for the organization.  

Required:

• Bachelor’s degree in Technology, Business Administration, or related field or equivalent work experience
• 10+ years of proven experience in strategic planning and aligning technology strategy to deliver on business objectives. Experience delivering technology solutions in support of strategic business initiatives and programs; 5+ years senior leadership experience in a complex enterprise. including experience in coaching, developing, and maximizing the talents of leaders and team members.
• Effectively leads the scoping of Epics/Projects/Programs; sets clear and defined objectives and goals and measures performance against goals/results. Experience leading and managing, to successful outcomes, complex projects involving diverse professional and non-professional staff and consultants, and requiring working collaboratively with other departments, disciplines, and staff at a variety of levels.
• Expertise in leveraging industry knowledge, technical expertise, and relationship building skills to quickly build rapport, credibility, and collaborative partnerships with peers, leaders, and stakeholders; applies skillful consulting abilities to influence corporate decisions.
• A humanistic approach to leadership with extensive experience in building, leading, motivating, evaluating teams and complex programs.  A collaborative leader; experience building consensus and influencing decisions through the development and maintenance of effective working relationships with executive management. Executive presence and ability to deliver a variety of messages to a variety of audiences including board presentations.
• Is forward-thinking, exhibits the ability to learn quickly; advocates and leads change efforts; analyzes successes and failures for improvement opportunities; enjoys challenges. Experience planning and implementing change initiatives, remaining flexible to meet constantly changing and sometimes opposing demands. Supports innovation and creativity by encouraging staff to accept and resolve challenges.

Preferred:

• Master of Business Administration (MBA)

a. Strategy – In partnership with Senior Leader, develop and implement the strategic business plan and operational goals. Establish and manage planning, delivery execution, operations, financial management/budgeting, vendor management, staffing model, governance, metrics and dashboards, and flexibility in delivering IT products and services to all internal and external stakeholders.

b. Enterprise Leadership - Provide strategic direction and leadership for a team of professional staff involved in the enterprise planning, building and operations functions that support Wellmark and divisional strategy and goals. Cascade and communicate strategy and initiatives to team members, driving customer/stakeholder service, supporting achievement of divisional and overall company results.

c. Team Leadership - Provide leadership and day-to-day management of financial and human resources, primarily focusing on employee and leader coaching and mentoring, development, performance management and improvement, coordination and budgeting for staff, and department(s) specific functions/services.

d. Define and provide leadership, strategic direction, and oversight of Wellmark's Technology Strategy. Lead the implementation efforts related to the Wellmark technology strategy, ensuring Wellmark achieves an industry technology leadership position that improves performance, scale, and the leverage of technical assets in alignment with Wellmark products, services, and technical capabilities. Transformation efforts will align with and positively impact customer experience, operational processes, value proposition, and business model. Transformation will be both internal and external to the organization, positively impacting the way we delivery capabilities into the market.

e. Identify and monitor key competitor commercial and business initiatives as well as industry trends and proactively communicate their impact on Wellmark, with an emphasis on how technology disruptions create economic and competitive value. Possess a deep understanding of the technology industry, with knowledge of current and future policies, practices, and trends in technology affecting the industry and business environment.

f. Provide direction of oversight for the execution of enterprise technology platforms and services. Lead the strategy and execution of enterprise architecture standards and practices, cloud strategy and operations, API platforms and enterprise data assets with a focus on optimizing for company leverage while meeting the strategic goals of the organization.

g. Lead the organization's cloud strategy and cloud services function with the aim to drive adoption of leading cloud capabilities while optimization cost, architecture, maturity, and security. Provide expertise in the cloud computing market with the goal of elevating the technology divisions' talent and cloud computing maturity with the aim of creating leverage and access to innovation.

h. Own the technology divisions reference architecture, enterprise architecture capabilities and engineering practices ensuring alignment to the corporate strategy and technology strategy. Drive adoption of the reference architecture, standards and practices in alignment with organizational investment priorities while balancing change management, strategic risk and operational risk of advancing the reference architecture.

i. Provide oversight and strategic direction to leaders and global teams that lead strategic initiatives and technology operations that are multi-functional and highly complex.  Coach, mentor and develop talent to apply business acumen to a portfolio of IT products and Epics. Lead the team through the full product lifecycle with the aim to optimize customer value while managing risk, resiliency, and security.

j. Provide direction of oversight for the execution of Communities of Practice (CoP) and Centers of Excellence (CoEs) that span key functions and disciplines across the division, including user experience, business analysis, agile, product management, architecture and design, software engineering, quality engineering and production operations. Advance the maturity of disciplines aligned to leading industry best practices.

k. Other duties as assigned.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

This job requires a non-compete agreement.

An Equal Opportunity Employer

The policy of Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield is to recruit, hire, train and promote individuals in all job classifications without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, veteran status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other characteristic protected by law.

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