Agile Product Management Senior Manager

Cigna - Morris Plains, NJ

Full-time - Senior

Hybrid - Morris Plains, NJ

Insurance Carriers and Related Activities

About the position

The Chief Technical Product Owner (CTPO) role at The Cigna Group is a senior management position responsible for leading a team of Technical Product Owners (TPOs) who oversee products that create and/or consume Pharmacy Benefit Management (PBM) entities such as Price Quotes, PBM Drug, and Claim Profile. This role encompasses direct management of TPOs throughout the entire Agile value delivery cycle, which includes close collaboration with business partners to develop market-driven roadmaps, quarterly program increment planning, and supporting the bi-weekly sprint cadence. The CTPO will also assist in design and testing phases, as well as provide support during releases and production support. In this position, the CTPO will manage the work of the team, engage in resource planning, and oversee career management for team members. The role requires a high level of comfort with ambiguity and necessitates strong collaboration skills with various partners, peers, and staff. The CTPO will cultivate close working relationships with Business Product Owners (BPOs) and other stakeholders to create a product roadmap that maximizes value, drives earnings growth, and enhances customer outcomes. The CTPO will be responsible for understanding customer needs, proposing and shaping market research, and turning customer insights into actionable features. This includes supporting discovery, ideation, estimation, and value analysis for potential new product features in partnership with BPOs, Architects, Engineering leaders, and other stakeholders. The role also involves providing oversight of intake activities, managing cross-functional relationships, and guiding TPOs in Agile best practices. The CTPO will partner with Architects and Engineering leaders to develop solution options and manage scope, risk, and communication throughout the project lifecycle. Additionally, the CTPO will drive innovation within the organization and provide ongoing leadership, coaching, and mentorship to TPO direct reports.

Responsibilities

• Cultivates a close working relationship with Business Product Owners (BPO) and other stakeholders to create a product roadmap that maximizes value, drives earnings growth, and improves customer outcomes.
• Fully understands customer needs and provides key input to the feature roadmap.
• Supports discovery, ideation, estimation, and value analysis for potential new product features, in partnership with BPOs, Architects, Engineering leaders, and other stakeholders.
• Provides oversight of intake activities and supports the creation of estimates when needed.
• Independently manages and influences cross-functional relationships, as required for features within the program backlog.
• Provides guidance and mentorship to direct reports and other TPOs, and provides input into their features and/or user stories as needed.
• Leads TPOs in Story Mapping, adoption, and utilization of Agile best practices to decompose work from themes, p-epics, epics/features, and stories.
• Partners with and supports Architects and Engineering leaders in the development of solution options, identification and prioritization of enablers and dependencies, and the identification of constraints, guidelines, and non-functional requirements as they relate to features within the program backlog.
• Partners with Delivery Manager in scope management, risk management, communication management, dependency management, and PI Planning and execution.
• Be hands-on in the designing of robust solutions to hard problems, while considering scale, security, reliability, and cost.
• Resolves escalated issues related to feature and user story issues when appropriate.
• Provides comprehensive consultation related to p-epics, epics/features, and stories to Business and Technology partners and leadership, on all phases of the value delivery cycle.
• Participates in resource and capacity planning.
• Drives innovation in the organization.
• Ability to think outside of the box to simplify the current environment for better manageability and support.
• Provides regular and ongoing leadership, coaching, mentoring, and guidance to TPO direct reports, including weekly 1:1s, quarterly check-ins, and annual compensation reviews.

Requirements

• Experience in design and implementation of Entities and APIs.
• Experience in designing, developing, and integrating RESTful APIs.
• Strategic and creative thinker with ability to think outside the box and translate strategies and customer insights into actions/features/implementation.
• Strong negotiation skills with ability to rationalize between needs, ability to deliver, cost, time, and quality.
• Excellent problem solving and analytical skills.
• Excellent project management skills with a strong understanding of business processes and operations.
• Proven ability to tie together complex issues and implement solutions to meet the needs of the enterprise, clients, and customers.
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams and drive results with strong sense of urgency.
• Team player with proven ability to foster and manage working relationships within a matrix environment.
• Ability to handle multiple priorities.
• Superior collaboration and verbal and written communication skills.
• Superior influencing and presentation skills.
• Experience working in diverse disciplines within Cigna or equivalent healthcare industry experience.
• Demonstrated experience working with users to identify and validate requirements.
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure/service concepts is a plus.
• Familiarity with data, services, and API technologies.
• Experience managing and mentoring the work of product managers/product owners and/or other technology workers either as a direct manager or as a lead in a matrix organization.
• Experience with supporting the design and testing efforts on projects, including skills in data analysis and system logical design.
• Agile Product Owner Certified and/or significant knowledge and experience in Cigna Agile value delivery cycle and supporting tools, techniques, and processes.

Nice-to-haves

• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure/service concepts is a plus.
• Experience in the healthcare industry.

Benefits

• Health insurance coverage
• Dental insurance coverage
• 401k benefit for retirement savings plan
• Flexible scheduling options
• Paid holidays
• Professional development opportunities
• Employee discount programs
• Life insurance coverage
• Mental health days
• Wellness programs