Head App Develop & Arch

Overview

ABOUT US   Birdsong Hearing Benefits™ LLC, is a hearing benefits manager that views hearing care as total care. We provide Medicare Advantage, including all lines of business in government programs, along with commercial solutions for the most under-utilized supplemental benefit: Hearing.   We are looking for dedicated, talented, and passionate individuals who want to join us in helping people awaken to the full sound of life. We are driven by the following values:   - People focused, realizing it is all about our consumers and each other. - Collaborative with a strong team spirit, happy to work together to achieve greater results. - Intuitive and creative, generating ideas and solutions to transform the hearing care ecosystem. - Full of grit, wanting to work hard to achieve success. - A growth mentality, eager to adapt and be flexible in an ever-changing environment Summary The Head of Application Development is responsible for planning, coordinating, and supervising the activities related to the design, development, implementation processes, architecture, and implementation of organizational information systems and software applications as assigned by the CIO. The role is also responsible for implementing, maintaining, supporting, and upgrading existing systems and applications. This individual will apply proven communication skills, strong emotional intelligence, ability to develop others, lead teams, exceptional problem-solving skills, and knowledge of best practices to guide his/her development team on issues related to the design, development, and deployment of mission-critical information and software systems.   The Head of Application Development will be a member of the Birdsong Hearing Benefits Leadership Team and will report to the CIO. He/she will be the principal design architect and implementation specialist of Birdsong and its affiliates most complex technical applications across the enterprise. This position will have management responsibilities of application development, to support him/her in carrying out the responsibilities of the role and delivering the objectives. The ideal candidate will bring a consistent track record, with seasoned experience of building high-quality enterprise products, platforms, systems, and services that are highly extensible, reliable, secure, and performant at scale. This role will collaborate and partner with business leadership in the company to lead the strategy, planning, adoption, and execution of the architectural roadmap and enforce and drive efficient software development best practices. This role is a thought leader, expected to bring strategic direction regarding 'what is possible' and 'how can we achieve our goals' to influence our top-level business and service goals. Ultimately, the role’s  mission is to add business value and create competitive advantage for the business through effective and efficient execution of product & service strategies in the context of a fast-paced, start-up  culture and business objectives.

Responsibilities

ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS Key Strategy & Execution - Work with CIO and other IT leaders to develop overall IT strategy in the context of the business strategy. - Oversees projects and assists with application architecture. - Manages the complete development lifecycle of the software systems; including gathering requirements, database management, software development, testing, implementation, user follow up, support and projects. - Manages the integrity, and changes to the application development servers and databases. - Oversees the development and implementation of change control processes for the development team to follow. - Provides ad-hoc reporting and decision support required for management decision processes, strong resources, and capacity planning experiences. - Manages the budget process associated with applications, contracts, and change management requirements. - Provides technology decisions that impact software development in consultation with business - Oversees special IT projects as assigned and supports the business for operational needs associated with applications functionality - Manages the development and deployment of new applications, systems software, and/or enhancements to existing applications throughout the enterprise. - Oversees that development projects meet business requirements and goals, fulfill end-user requirements, and identify and resolve systems issues. - Manages the pre-testing phase of development by evaluating proposals to identify potential problem areas and makes the appropriate recommendations that best serves the business needs - Oversees the collaboration of analysts, designers, and system owners in the testing of new software programs and applications. - Oversees the identification and resolution of program errors. - Provides technical leadership to BSA, QA Analyst and programmers working on development project teams. - Oversees the review and analyses of existing applications’ effectiveness and efficiency and develops strategies for improving or leveraging these systems. - Oversees the design, development and installation of enhancements and upgrades to systems and application software. - Provides research and makes recommendations on software products and services in support of procurement and development efforts. - Manages and enforces functional policies, procedures, and quality assurance best practices. - Defines and improves the technology strategy and blueprint that aligns with the business objectives. Identifies, compares, selects, and implements technology solutions that meet current and future needs for Company’s Enterprise Applications & Platform software systems, especially on the architecture side. - Guides senior engineers and architects. Leads design discussions, proves out concepts through prototypes and be on the front lines of implementing the hardest parts of production systems. - Research industry trends and their applicability to our platform and application architecture. Innovates and differentiates the company from competitors. - Defines technical requirements (scalability, availability, maintenance, security). Architect, design, code and deploy full-scale systems based on critical business outcomes and communicate architectural decisions, plans, goals, and strategies, highlighting short-term trade-offs vs. long-term commitments. - Collaborates with business peers to analyze enterprise business context (business strategy and trends), as well as change requirements in other application architecture viewpoints to derive the technology architecture future state. This includes defining the requirements, principles and models that guide technology decisions for the enterprise. - Drives innovation by using innovative new technologies and approaches to renovate, extend, and transform the existing core technology base around cloud, mobile, systematized machine learning, microservices, big data, and API-enabled platforms and products. - Be responsible for the analysis of the current technological environment to detect critical deficiencies and recommend solutions for improvement. In addition, own the analysis of technology industry and market trends to resolve their potential impact on the enterprise as well as on the enterprise technology architecture. - Assists with crafting the governance, assurance and standards activities associated with ensuring enterprise technology architecture compliance, working with other area architects including Infrastructure and IT Security. - Leads all aspects of, or consults on, technology and architecture implementation and modification activities, particularly for new or shared infrastructure solutions. Consults on application or infrastructure development projects to harmonize systems or infrastructure with the enterprise technology architecture and identify when it is vital to modify the enterprise technical architecture to accommodate immediate or future project needs. - Defines and documents metrics to measure and demonstrate enterprise technology value and vital enterprise technology architecture design and analysis work, possibly including project retrospective documentation and metric collection. - Manages day-to-day operational needs around all applications, managing SLAs for each application and/or vendor managing the application. - Creates dashboards on all operational needs on a regular frequency for all applications. Dashboards need to have strong meaning tied to contracts and operational needs of reporting.   Leadership and Management - Leads the application development team including internal team members and consultant/contractors. - Promotes a positive work environment, promoting a culture of excellence and accountability; selects and trains new team members to not only understand their role in technology, also understanding the business model that makes Birdsong successful; continuously provides feedback, mentoring, and coaching to inspire a high-performing team of principal engineers to develop technology architecture that enables and drives new business capabilities and operating models. - Develops positive and productive relationships with business leaders across the organization to influence how applications can enable new sources of value. Works closely with business leader tied to each application to ensure quality communication and alignment to operational needs. - Ensure that applications processes (including those of external service providers) are conducted in line with corporate social responsibility, environmental and technical policies and applicable standards and legislation. - Implement and manage application life cycle management status reporting, metrics, and benchmarks. - Manage relationships with major vendors and service providers to ensure they cost-effectively meet the needs of the organization. Keep senior leaders informed and up-to-date on costs, progress and risk/obstacles associated with application management. - Conduct regular surveys of stakeholder satisfaction with applications, publish the results and, where necessary, implement action plans to improve satisfaction. - Holds all application delivery teams accountable for optimizing the cost, risk, and value of applications throughout the life cycle.   Application Governance and Delivery   - Oversee the assessment of the technical and business fitness of the application portfolio and their associated costs and risks. - Facilitate the application governance process to gain consensus on a prioritized set of measurable business outcomes that applications must support. - Work with stakeholders and the application governance council to define a prioritized set of business outcomes and application work to accomplish those outcomes within the limitations of the application budget. - Work with stakeholders to accomplish this application work in a way that improves the business and technical fitness of the application portfolio and minimizes its ongoing support costs. - Oversee the application organization's successful delivery of these business outcomes in partnership with business colleagues. - Oversee benefits realization to ensure that business outcomes are achieved. - Oversee support activities in conjunction with infrastructure and operations to ensure the applications perform well in production. - Oversee development of processes and tools in conjunction with infrastructure and operations to automate the handoff of code releases from development to operations (DevOps). - Collaborate with the head of information security to ensure that the organization's applications are effectively secured and that risks are mitigated.

Qualifications

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE/QUALIFICATIONS: Experience & Expertise: - Min 13-15 years of software engineering and technology management experience preferred - 5 years in a senior leadership role overseeing large enterprise level application architecture and decision making preferred. - Demonstrated leadership capability of leading and developing a team preferred. - 7 years of experience working through the requirement, design, development, QA & UAT testing, implementing and delivering in release cycles, and to customers preferred. - Experience in managed care, supplemental benefits, from a provider, payer or third-party administrator organization preferred. - Knowledge of managed care, specifically regulatory requirements associated with CMS, federal and state regulations preferred. - Experience in healthcare terminology and understanding of lines of business associated with healthcare such as Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, commercial, and all government programs preferred. - Understanding that this role, in a start-up involves both hands-on tactical work and activities along with strategic drive. - Ability to effectively and clearly communicate software engineering concepts to technical and nontechnical audiences. - Demonstrated history of hiring, developing, retaining and upgrading technical talent including the management of globally distributed teams. Expected to ensure succession planning efforts are in place. - Experience with integrating with partner solutions and acquired technologies. - Experience with coordinating and transitioning application development and/or support work from external parties to internal team members and vice versa - Experienced in modernizing legacy systems including the technical and change management aspects that accompany transformative change. - Knowledge on the following platforms preferred – Salesforce; Dynamics 365, Adobe (AEM & eComm), Python & MySQL. - Knowledge and experience with Claims, Care management, Enrollment & Billing, Provider management, Customer Contact Centre and end Customer facing portals is required   Other Personal Characteristics and Experience   - Must be a critical thinker, with strong problem-solving skills, project management skills: financial/budget management, scheduling, and resource management. Must demonstrate drive to be fully engaged, active in managing the functional area and staff, and ensure that requirements and needs of operations are met. - A strong solution orientation with a penchant for not only identifying problems but also finding ways of solving them within typical business constraints. Able to think at a higher level of both strategic ‘TrueNorth’ of the business model, along with daily, tactic activities. - Ability to lead and motivate cross-functional, interdisciplinary teams to achieve strategic goals and educate, guide, study with team to understand the business model, purpose of the TPA and how the operation works in application to the role and IT needs. - Expected ability to professionally handle confidential matters and show an appropriate level of judgment and maturity. - Mature ability to manage team with a high level of emotional intelligence, keeping team focused on goals and objectives and ensuring professional behavior. - High degree of initiative, understanding the make-up of a start-up environment being agile and elastic, and ability to work with little supervision. - Seasoned experience managing a diverse, multifaceted business functional area that has heavy demands, and requires strong agility. - Experience with the following highly preferred: - Financial accounting and reporting practices applicable to applications, costs, and risks. Solid financial hygiene in managing IT budgets - IT contracts and cost implications - Engagement with procurement and legal contract advisors for additional information - IT applications, operations, service, and support organizations - Data processing, analysis, and quality management tools - Development and implementation of processes and policies - Lean IT, agile development, and DevOps principles and frameworks - HealthCare IT, Life Sciences and/or Healthcare devices           Education   - Bachelor Science in computer science, engineering, finance, business management or related field preferred or equivalent work experience. - A postgraduate degree preferred, with emphasis in information technology or the like.