Director of Engineering & Product Management - Benefits Platform

Technical Summary:
The Director of Engineering & Product Management - Benefits Platform is accountable for shaping and executing a modernized Benefits Platform strategy, leading cloud-native transformation, platform resilience, and continuous innovation aligned to business and regulatory priorities. The role provides senior engineering and product leadership, setting standards for architecture, security, reliability, and DevSecOps while guiding teams from concept through delivery and adoption. Partnering closely with business, operations, and market leaders, the role ensures platform investments align with customer needs, operational goals, and regulatory requirements while delivering measurable business outcomes. This leader brings strong strategic judgment and executive presence, connecting technical and product decisions to business results while scaling high-performing teams and managing risk in a complex, regulated environment.

Job Summary:
This director level role is primarily responsible for directing team(s) in defining product strategy and vision, overseeing product roadmaps from ideation to launch, and driving and approving decisions on new products or enhancements to bring to market. This includes reviewing and selecting business cases for new products, improvements to existing products, and/or business ventures; defining, overseeing, and avoiding technical debt; providing direction and oversight to product team(s) and diverse stakeholder groups across the organization throughout the product management life cycle, and leveraging partnerships with operations teams and market stakeholders to support product adoption. This role is also responsible for directing internal and external discovery for new and existing products, overseeing end-to-end prototyping and validation with end users, ensuring learnings are funneled to product roadmaps, overseeing the ongoing tracking of outcomes and key performance indicators, and directing and overseeing product teams in the resolution of complex user problems.

Essential Responsibilities:

• Oversees the operation of multiple units and/or departments by identifying customer and operational needs; analyzing resources, costs, and forecasts and incorporating them into business plans; gaining cross-functional support for business plans and priorities; translating business strategy into actionable business requirements; obtaining and distributing resources; setting standards and measuring progress; removing obstacles that impact performance; guiding performance and developing contingency plans accordingly; and ensuring products and/or services meet customer requirements and expectations while aligning with organizational strategies.
• Demonstrates continuous learning and maintains a highly skilled and engaged workforce by aligning resource plans with business objectives; overseeing the recruitment, selection, and development of talent; motivating teams; preparing individuals for growth opportunities and advancement; staying current with industry trends, benchmarks, and best practices; providing guidance when difficult decisions need to be made; and ensuring performance management guidelines and expectations drive business needs.
• Directs team(s) in defining product strategy and vision, and oversees product roadmaps from ideation to launch by driving and approving decisions on new products or enhancements to bring to market; reviewing the evaluation of potential business process changes, system impacts, and flow concepts to determine the viability of implementing desired enhancements; ensuring the provision of an end-to-end holistic view of how specific business processes and internal system configurations impact the user experience; reviewing and selecting business cases for new products, improvements to existing products, and/or business ventures; defining, overseeing, and avoiding technical debt as appropriate; managing product and operational budgets; ensuring documentation clearly communicates customer/stakeholder needs to the product team; and partnering with team members to clarify features and requirements as necessary.
• Provides direction and oversight to product team(s) and diverse stakeholder groups across the organization throughout the product management life cycle by driving the resolution of inter-squad, cross-product and external dependencies, roadblocks and constraints; leveraging partnerships with operations teams and market stakeholders to support product adoption; overseeing training efforts to build readiness for production support and operational readiness teams; leading feature demos for executive stakeholders; providing advanced product expertise, peer training, and consultation as appropriate; ensuring adherence to enterprise compliance standards; and managing technology risks as appropriate.
• Directs the internal and external discovery for new and existing products by leveraging partnerships with key stakeholders to identify business needs; ensuring the identification of best in class marketplace innovation; overseeing prototyping and validation with end users with support from UX design and research, engineering, and other stakeholders as appropriate; and ensuring learnings are funneled to the product roadmap.
• Oversees the ongoing tracking of outcomes, financials, and key performance indicators by reviewing KPIs and performance metrics (e.g., speed, quality, etc.); reviewing key metrics and verifying KPI alignment; and directing the development and maintenance of ad hoc reports, status updates, and presentation decks for key stakeholders and leadership.
• Directs and oversees product team members to ensure the resolution of user problems for complex issues by ensuring the work backlog is prioritized and balanced across new development, non-functional requirements, and technical work (e.g., maintenance, support, technical debt, etc.); and overseeing competitive and user research/testing, experimentation, and/or design thinking initiatives.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities: (Core)

• Ambiguity/Uncertainty Management
• Attention to Detail
• Business Knowledge
• Communication
• Constructive Feedback
• Critical Thinking
• Cross-Group Collaboration
• Decision Making
• Dependability
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Support
• Drives Results
• Facilitation Skills
• Health Care Industry
• Influencing Others
• Integrity
• Leadership
• Learning Agility
• Organizational Savvy
• Problem Solving
• Short- and Long-term Learning & Recall
• Strategic Thinking
• Team Building
• Teamwork
• Topic-Specific Communication

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities: (Functional)

• Analytical Skills
• Client Focus
• Conflict Resolution
• Cross Department Coordination
• Debugging and Troubleshooting
• Delegation
• Demonstrating Personal Flexibility
• Getting Work Done Through Others
• IT Service Design and Introduction
• IT Service Improvement
• IT Standards, Procedures & Policies
• ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) Consultation
• Innovative Mindset
• Managing Diverse Relationships
• Mentoring and Coaching
• Negotiation
• Organizational Skills
• Prioritization
• Relationship Building
• Risk Management
• Technical Communication
• Technical Documentation
• Vendor Management

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science, Business Administration, Information Systems Management, Data Analytics, Engineering, Social Science, or related field and minimum ten (10) years experience in product management, project management, IT consulting, product development or support, business/system analysis, or a directly related field. Additional equivalent work experience in a directly related field may be substituted for the degree requirement. Advanced degrees may be substituted for a portion of the work experience requirements.
• Minimum five (5) years experience working in product management, including product discovery and developing short-term and long-term product strategies.
• Minimum two (2) years experience developing and validating business cases, including identifying value of investment projects.
• Minimum three (3) years experience working with agile teams, including familiarity with scrum ceremonies and agile best practices.
• Minimum three (3) years experience in strategic planning and building product roadmaps.
• Minimum three (3) years supervisory experience managing direct reports.
• Minimum two (2) years experience managing operational or project budgets.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Lean/Six Sigma certification.
• Four (4) years data analytics experience.

Primary Location: California,Pasadena,West Annex - Parsons Additional Locations:

• Walnut Creek
• Portland
• Burbank
• Oakland
• Atlanta
• Denver
• Rockville
• Santa Ana
• San Diego
• Renton

Scheduled Weekly Hours: 40
Shift: Day
Workdays: Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri,
Working Hours Start: 08:00 AM
Working Hours End: 05:00 PM
Job Schedule: Full-time
Job Type: Standard
Worker Location: Flexible
Employee Status: Regular
Employee Group/Union Affiliation: NUE-IT-01|NUE|Non Union Employee
Job Level: Director/Senior Director
Department: KPIT ADMIN - HP BIO HPTS OPS CNTR - 9601
Pay Range: $194400 - $251570 / year Kaiser Permanente is committed to pay equity and transparency. The posted pay range is based on possible base salaries for the role and does not include the value of our total rewards package. Actual pay determined at offer will be based on years of relevant work experience, education, certifications, skills and geographic location along with a review of current employees in similar roles to ensure that pay equity is achieved and maintained across Kaiser Permanente.
Travel: Yes, 10 % of the Time
Flexible: Work location is on-site at a KP location, with the flexibility to work from home. Worker location must align with Kaiser Permanente's Authorized States policy. Kaiser Permanente is an equal opportunity employer committed to fair, respectful, and inclusive workplaces. Applicants will be considered for employment without regard to race, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic or status.