Operational Readiness Lead at Cigna in Bloomfield, Connecticut

Job Description:

The Operational Readiness Lead will own the process to ensure new technology solutions meet the optimal set of standards for resiliency and modern design before entering the production environment. This enterprise role will develop requirements through soliciting and organizing feedback, partnering directly with Cigna Application Delivery Team leaders (Digital, D&A, etc), collaborating with Architecture and Platform Engineering SMEs, Site Reliability Engineers (SRE), and Operations teams to determine best-in-breed approaches to automating and evolving Cigna's Operational Readiness practices, with emphasis on scalability, reliability, and speed-to-market delivery. This role will lead the center of excellence evolving best practices along with industry leaders and coach, champion, and influence cultural change to a Site Reliability Engineering mindset.

Responsibilities

• Create and execute a roadmap to scale and strengthen operational readiness across the entire Technology organization, integrate into existing processes, provide leadership risk visibility, and evolve teams across Cigna into a Site Reliability Engineering culture. Deliverables will focus around automation, reporting, training, and partnering with other teams to ensure all solutions across the enterprise follow the process.


• Lead the Center of Excellence to enhance and maintain best practices for Enterprise Operational Readiness, which will serve as a mechanism for bringing new best practices to teams across the organization using a federated model.


• Drive adoption of practices through reporting, training, and organizational presentations to senior leadership. Provide metrics and compliance to allow leaders to understand and take action on risk entering the production environment.


• Act as a concierge for Product Owners going through Operational Readiness, Failure Mode Analysis, and Game Day exercises for critical systems.


• Create procedures to ensure risk visibility and signoff at the right level of the organization before production implementation


• Partner with teams such as problem management to analyze managed incident data to create new gates in Operational Readiness to mitigate these risks in the future as well as ensuring teams not able to meet all Operational Readiness requirements drive follow-ups in system of record (problem or risk)


• Establish channels for collaboration with Ops Readiness stakeholders within the Enterprise including, but not limited to: Operations Leadership, Application Delivery Teams, Operations Teams, Monitoring, SRE, Product Owners, Scrummasters, Agile Leadership, etc.


• Interface with and influence Enterprise ITSM practices such as Event Management, Incident Management, Release Management, Risk Mitigation, Problem Management, Change Management, Config Management and Escalation Procedures, ensuring harmonization with Ops Readiness Best Practices and overall effectiveness of these practices


• Communicate Operational Readiness concepts effectively to IT & Business audiences


• Translate technology delivery needs and operational needs into associated technical requirements for Automated Governance, and understand solutions that will incorporate these requirements

(General Competencies)

• Provides counsel and advice to management on significant delivery matters, often requiring coordination between organizations.

• Influence matrix teams across the organization and present data to leadership to drive focus on modern and resilient system design.


• Stay up to date on Site Reliability Engineering best practices and train the organization on ways to improve availability.


• Responsible for coordinating, scheduling and assigning tasks, team building, maintaining working relationships.


• Organizes and guides project operations through new standards.


• Keeps informed of technical and managerial advances in IT.

How you will make a difference:

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  Enterprise Operational Readiness - Allow leaders to understand when delivering a new capability adds risk to the Technology environment, define the best in class processes to ensure we can support our production environment across Technology, and evolve the organization into a Site Reliability Engineering mindset.


• 
  Operational Readiness Governance Automation- provide input and content for developing a strategy to support Automating Governance Processes, including but not limited to FMEA, Well Architected Reviews, compliance validation, Configuration Mgmt validation, Security validation, etc.


• 
  Communication Strategy- support the Enterprise in developing a communication strategy to highlight roadmap deliverables and Key Performance Indicator measures and progress. Inclusive of online content, blog posts, intranet web presence, analyze documents to maintain continuity of style of content, manage updates and revisions to technical literature

What you should have: Enterprise Competencies

• 
  Customer Focus - is dedicated to meeting the expectations and requirements of internal and external customers; acts with customers in mind; and establishes and maintains effective relationships with customers and gains their trust and respect


• 
  Strategic Agility - Is able to come up with the next great breakthrough thing to do; is creative, a visionary, and can manage innovation; is an effective strategist full of ideas and possibilities; sees multiple futures; has broad interests and knowledge; can both create and bring exciting ideas to market; comfortable speculating about alternative futures without all of the data


• 
  Influential Leadership - Is skilled at getting individuals, teams, and an entire organization to perform at a higher level and to embrace change; negotiates skillfully to achieve a fair outcome or promote a common cause; communicates a compelling vision and is committed to what needs to be done; inspires others; builds motivated, high-performing teams; understands what motivates different people.


• 
  Dealing with Ambiguity - can effectively cope with change; can shift gears comfortably; can handle risk and uncertainty; and can decide and act without having the total picture


• 
  Interpersonal Savvy - relates well to all kinds of people-up, down and sideways, inside and outside the organization


• 
  Learning and Applying Quickly - learns quickly when facing new problems; a relentless and versatile learner; and quickly grasps the essence and the underlying structure of anything


• 
  Managing Vision and Purpose - communicate a compelling and inspired vision or sense of core purpose; talks beyond today; can inspire and motivate entire units; and makes the vision shareable by everyone


• 
  Organizational Agility - knowledge about how the organization works; knows how to get things done both through formal channels and the informal network; and understand the culture of the organization


• 
  Managing and Measuring Work - Clearly assigns responsibility for tasks and decisions; sets clear objectives and measures; monitors process, progress, and results; designs feedback loops into work.


• 
  Perspective - can discuss multiple aspects and impacts of issues and project them into the future; can think globally; and looks toward the broadest possible view of an issue/challenge


• 
  Priority Setting - quickly zeroes in on the critical few and puts the trivial many aside; can quickly sense what will help or hinder accomplishing a goal; and create focus / eliminates roadblocks


• 
  Problem Solving - looks beyond the obvious and doesn't stop at the first answers; is excellent at honest analysis; and uses rigorous logic and methods to solve difficult problems with effective solutions

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience transforming an enterprise to Site Reliability Engineering and Resilient System design at scale. Understanding of end to end application design, middleware, infrastructure components, and cloud technologies. Ability to keep up with industry trends and best practices.


• Ability to present ideas and data to an executive audience.


• Ability to be organizational change agent and drive new process adoption.


• Experience leading matrix teams


• Capable of training teams across a large organization


• Data visualization


• Background in Lean / Six Sigma is a plus


• Demonstrated capabilities in team work and leadership, including the desire and eagerness to mentor and assist in the professional development of junior staff members


• Demonstrated interest in a professional development for self and teammates, through professional organizations, coursework, certifications, conference attendance, etc.


• Have a track record for driving program deliverables


• Ability to work independently and manage multiple assignments


• Demonstrated ability to manage ambiguity and apply problem-solving skills


• Strong conflict resolution skills with the ability to exercise mature judgement


• Demonstrated ability to employ research and analytical thinking


• Strong oral and written communication skills, including presentation skills (MS Visio, MS PowerPoint, MS Word)


• Ability to evaluate team processes; recommend, coordinate proposals and then needed actions


• Ability to provide metrics tracking operational performance and quality of services


• Ability to hold self and others accountable


• Proven ability to analyze data, troubleshoot problems, provide recommendations and follow up on their implementation


• Solid knowledge of ITIL principles


• Commitment to a high level of integrity, honesty, and openness


• Conviction, courage and willingness to challenge the status quo, even if perspective may be unpopular


• Passion, positive energy and the ability to create a fun environment, even during times of stress


• Adept at getting things done, and performing amidst ambiguity and complexity


• Bachelor Degree in Information System Management, Informatics or similar combination of education and experience is a strong advantage

This position is not eligible to be performed in Colorado.

About Cigna

Cigna Corporation exists to improve lives. We are a global health service company dedicated to improving the health, well-being and peace of mind of those we serve. Together, with colleagues around the world, we aspire to transform health services, making them more affordable and accessible to millions. Through our unmatched expertise, bold action, fresh ideas and an unwavering commitment to patient-centered care, we are a force of health services innovation. When you work with us, or one of our subsidiaries, you'll enjoy meaningful career experiences that enrich people's lives. What difference will you make?

Qualified applicants will be considered without regard to race, color, age, disability, sex, childbirth (including pregnancy) or related medical conditions including but not limited to lactation, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran or military status, religion, national origin, ancestry, marital or familial status, genetic information, status with regard to public assistance, citizenship status or any other characteristic protected by applicable equal employment opportunity laws.

If you require reasonable accommodation in completing the online application process, please email: SeeYourself@cigna.com for support. Do not email SeeYourself@cigna.com for an update on your application or to provide your resume as you will not receive a response.