[Hiring] Program Manager @Highmark Health

Role Description

Lead a strategically related portfolio of work by connecting enterprise strategy, governance, cross-functional delivery, executive decisions, talent development, change leadership, and measurable business value. The Program Manager serves as an enterprise portfolio leader responsible for translating strategy into coordinated action, measurable outcomes, and sustained business value. This role leads a strategically related portfolio of programs, projects, and initiatives that may span business, technology, clinical, regulatory, operational, and external-partner boundaries.

The Program Manager works closely with executive sponsors, domain leadership, Project Managers, Business Analysts, technology leaders, delivery leads, and subject-matter experts to align priorities, maintain portfolio visibility, manage cross-initiative dependencies, facilitate decisions, and advance intended benefits. The role provides leadership across a matrixed delivery environment and helps ensure that the right work is pursued, sequenced, governed, and supported in alignment with enterprise priorities.

Essential Responsibilities

• Strategic Alignment and Portfolio Leadership
  • Translate enterprise direction into an integrated, outcome-focused portfolio.
  • Translate enterprise and domain strategies into coherent portfolio roadmaps, priorities, intended outcomes, and measurable success criteria.
  • Maintain an integrated view of portfolio health, including strategic alignment, scope, schedule, financial performance, capacity, risks, dependencies, decisions, and expected benefits.
  • Evaluate new and existing initiatives based on strategic value, urgency, complexity, risk, sequencing, resource requirements, and organizational readiness.
  • Identify systemic risks, bottlenecks, opportunities, and trade-offs that extend beyond individual project boundaries.
  • Recommend where work should be accelerated, deferred, reshaped, or escalated based on enterprise priorities and available capacity.
• Governance and Executive Decision Support
  • Create the structure and insight leaders need to make timely, informed decisions.
  • Establish and facilitate effective portfolio and program governance, including clear decision rights, escalation paths, accountability, and operating rhythms.
  • Partner with executive sponsors and domain leaders to frame desired outcomes, validate priorities, resolve trade-offs, and address constraints.
  • Translate complex portfolio information into concise executive insights, options, recommendations, and decision requests.
  • Ensure decisions, risks, commitments, and changes are documented, communicated, and reflected in portfolio and initiative plans.
  • Escalate material risks, dependencies, resource conflicts, or strategic misalignment early enough to enable leadership action.
• Cross-Functional Orchestration and Delivery Enablement
  • Coordinate diverse contributors while preserving clear delivery accountability.
  • Coordinate work across business, technology, operations, clinical, regulatory, finance, data, vendor, and other delivery partners.
  • Integrate cross-project and cross-domain dependencies, milestones, capacity requirements, and decisions.
  • Determine and clarify appropriate delivery ownership in partnership with PMO and business leadership.
  • Guide Project Managers and delivery leads without unnecessarily taking over routine project execution.
  • Ensure projects and initiatives provide reliable information needed for portfolio governance and executive decision-making.
  • Intervene when portfolio-level conditions require corrective action, additional support, reprioritization, or escalation.
• Benefits Realization and Business Outcomes
  • Maintain focus on adoption, measurable outcomes, and sustained value.
  • Define and maintain portfolio and program outcomes, benefits, measures, assumptions, and value targets.
  • Monitor whether programs and initiatives remain positioned to achieve their intended business outcomes.
  • Partner with accountable business leaders to address barriers to adoption, operational readiness, and benefits realization.
  • Ensure leadership reporting communicates business impact and expected value, not merely delivery activity.
  • Support post-implementation evaluation and adjustment where intended outcomes are not being realized.
• Stakeholder Leadership and Communication
  • Build alignment and trust across senior leaders, partners, and delivery teams.
  • Build trusted, credible relationships with senior leaders, executive sponsors, and cross-functional partners.
  • Create integrated communication strategies for executives, governance bodies, delivery teams, and affected stakeholders.
  • Communicate risks, choices, recommendations, and business implications with clarity and appropriate context.
  • Influence and negotiate across organizational boundaries where direct authority may not exist.
  • Navigate sensitive organizational dynamics with diplomacy, transparency, active listening, and sound judgment.
• Leadership, Coaching, and Capability Development
  • Strengthen delivery leadership and consistent PMO practices.
  • Coach and mentor Project Managers and other delivery leads in disciplined execution, stakeholder leadership, problem-solving, and professional growth.
  • Reinforce consistent PMO standards, tools, governance practices, and communication expectations.
  • Identify delivery-capability gaps and recommend coaching, staffing, or resource responses.
  • Promote knowledge sharing, accountability, continuous improvement, and professional standards.
  • Help build project and program management capability beyond the immediate portfolio.
• Change Leadership
  • Enable adoption and sustained transformation across the portfolio.
  • Lead and enable cross-functional change by keeping stakeholders aligned to strategic intent, intended outcomes, and adoption expectations.
  • Anticipate resistance, readiness concerns, change saturation, and competing organizational demands.
  • Coordinate sequencing across initiatives to reduce avoidable disruption and change fatigue.
  • Promote adoption of effective practices and help scale successful approaches across the organization.
  • Maintain focus on sustained transformation rather than one-time implementation.
• Risk, Financial, Vendor, and Operational Oversight
  • Protect portfolio viability through disciplined oversight and early action.
  • Assess portfolio and program risks and establish mitigation, contingency, and escalation strategies.
  • Monitor financial health, investment assumptions, resource demand, and capacity constraints.
  • Partner with procurement, finance, legal, compliance, technology, and operational leaders as required.
  • Manage vendor performance against applicable contracts, statements of work, commitments, and expected outcomes.
  • Take or recommend corrective action when portfolio health, delivery viability, or expected value is at risk.

Qualifications

• Minimum: High School Diploma / GED
• Preferred: Bachelor's degree in business, technology, healthcare administration, operations, project management, or a related field, or equivalent relevant experience.
• Advanced degree in business, technology management, healthcare administration, or a related discipline.

Requirements

• Minimum: 7-10 years of work experience in project management or delivering business solutions using information technology.
• Preferred: Seven or more years of progressively responsible experience in program management, portfolio management, strategic execution, transformation, or complex cross-functional delivery.
• Demonstrated experience leading multiple interdependent initiatives across organizational or functional boundaries.
• Demonstrated experience working with senior leaders and executive sponsors to support prioritization, decisions, risk management, and outcome delivery.
• Experience leading through influence in a matrixed environment.
• Experience developing executive-level communications, recommendations, roadmaps, and integrated program or portfolio reporting.
• Experience identifying and managing cross-project dependencies, resource constraints, and strategic risks.
• Experience in healthcare, insurance, regulated operations, technology-enabled transformation, or another complex regulated environment.
• Experience with benefits realization, portfolio governance, organizational change, and executive decision facilitation.
• Experience coaching or developing Project Managers and delivery leaders.
• Experience using portfolio-management and collaboration platforms to support transparent reporting and decision-making.

Benefits

• Pay Range Minimum: $94,200.00
• Pay Range Maximum: $151,000.00
• Base pay is determined by a variety of factors including a candidate’s qualifications, experience, and expected contributions, as well as internal peer equity, market, and business considerations.