AI Strategy Manager Jobs in Arizona

Awarded a Healthiest Employer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona aims to fulfill its mission to inspire health and make it easy. AZ Blue offers a variety of health insurance products and services to meet the diverse needs of individuals, families, and small and large businesses as well as providing information and tools to help individuals make better health decisions.

At AZ Blue, we have a hybrid workforce strategy, called Workability, that offers flexibility with how and where employees work. Our positions are classified as hybrid, onsite or remote. While the majority of our employees are hybrid, the following classifications drive our current minimum onsite requirements:

• Hybrid People Leaders: must reside in AZ, required to be onsite at least twice per week
• Hybrid Individual Contributors: must reside in AZ, unless otherwise cited within this posting, required to be onsite at least once per week
• Hybrid 2 (Operational Roles such as but not limited to: Customer Service, Claims Processors, and Correspondence positions): must reside in AZ, unless otherwise cited within this posting, required to be onsite at least once per month
• Onsite: daily onsite requirement based on the essential functions of the job
• Remote: not held to onsite requirements, however, leadership can request presence onsite for business reasons including but not limited to staff meetings, one-on-ones, training, and team building

Please note that onsite requirements may change in the future, based on business need, and job responsibilities. Most employees should expect onsite requirements and at a minimum of once per week.

PURPOSE OF THE JOB

• Provides strategic and operational leadership across six critical IT domains: Enterprise Monitoring and Observability Platforms, Infrastructure Performance Assurance, Infrastructure Backup & Recovery, Systems Patching & Vulnerability Management, Claims IT Operations, and Trading Partner Operations
• Ensures the stability, reliability, and continuity of enterprise platforms and partner-facing systems that underpin healthcare claims processing and business operations at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona.
• This role bridges technical execution and business outcomes — partnering with cross-functional stakeholders to drive platform resilience, operational excellence, and continuous improvement across a complex, highly regulated healthcare IT environment.
• The position collaborates heavily with IT Operations, IT Production Support, Service ownership, roadmap, currency, usability, adoption, and maturity improvements across all the infrastructure, claims, trading partner and other business function service areas. This is a critical IT role that allows the support function to scale up to the demands of an ever-changing technology landscape and to meet the current and future needs of BCBSAZ core businesses.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

Required Work Experience

• 10 years of experience in computer technology and/or information systems
• 10 years of experience troubleshooting computer systems / providing service-desk support
• 7+ years of progressive IT operations experience
• 5 years of supervisory or lead experience, with at least 3 years in a people leadership role.

Required Education

• High-School Diploma or GED in general field of study

Required Licenses

• N/A

Required Certifications

• N/A

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

Preferred Work Experience

• 12 years of experience with operational support and maintenance
• 10 years of experience in computer technology and/or information systems
• 10 years of progressive IT operations experience
• 5 years of experience troubleshooting computer systems / providing service-desk support
• 5 years of demonstrated experience managing enterprise monitoring, backup/recovery, and patching programs in a large, complex environment.
• 10 years of supervisory / manager experience, with at least 5 years in a people leadership role.

Preferred Education

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Business, or related field

Preferred Licenses

• N/A

Preferred Certifications

ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Enterprise Monitoring

• Oversee enterprise-wide infrastructure and application monitoring tools and platforms such as Dynatrace, Splunk, and related observability tooling.
• Help define and implement alerting thresholds, and escalation paths for critical systems.
• Drive AIOps adoption and proactive incident detection to reduce mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to resolve (MTTR).
• Partner with application and platform teams to ensure end-to-end observability across on-premises and cloud environments.

Infrastructure Performance Assurance

• Set up of infrastructure, application, platform and system monitoring and alerting
• Proactive disciplines such as capacity and technical debt management
• Documentation (Operational and Architectural) across all IT Infrastructure areas
• Availability and Performance reporting
• IT Infrastructure patching and vulnerability management
• SLA/KPI Management for all IT infrastructure areas
• License tracking and management
• Any discipline that drives operational maturity and prevents outages in the IT infrastructure organization.

Backup & Recovery

• Support enterprise backup and disaster recovery strategy, helping ensure recovery systems meet defined RPO/RTO objectives for all critical systems.
• Manage backup platforms and tools (e.g., Rubrik, Commvault, or equivalent) and manage vendor relationships.
• Oversee recovery from all enterprise backups including tape, cloud archival, on-prem backup systems, etc.
• Ensure backup integrity through regular validation, recovery testing, and audit-ready documentation.
• Support maintenance of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BC/DR) runbooks and participate in exercises.

Patching & Vulnerability Management

• Direct the enterprise patching lifecycle for Windows, Linux, and application environments in alignment with security and compliance requirements.
• Collaborate with Information Security to prioritize CVE remediation and maintain patch compliance posture across all managed endpoints and servers.
• Manage patching schedules, change management coordination, and exception tracking.
• Report on patching coverage and risk exposure to senior leadership and audit stakeholders.

Claims IT Operations

• Provide operational leadership for IT systems supporting healthcare claims processing pipelines, including EDI ingestion, adjudication interfaces, reconciliation platforms, and claims tracking systems.
• Oversee incident management, root cause analysis, and problem resolution for claims-impacting system events.
• Partner with Claims, Provider Relations, and Enrollment teams to ensure system availability meets business SLAs.
• Support continuous improvement of claims IT platforms including pipeline automation, monitoring coverage, and operational runbooks.

Trading Partner Operations

• Lead the operational management of EDI trading partner onboarding, connectivity, and file exchange processes (837, 834, 835, 277CA, 999, and related X12 transactions).
• Serve as an escalation point for trading partner connectivity issues, file processing failures, and SLA exceptions.
• Partner with trading partner relations, compliance, and IT teams to ensure HIPAA-compliant data exchange.
• Maintain trading partner inventory, SLA agreements, and operational documentation.

Leadership & Cross-Functional Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, develop, manage and evaluate the team of IT professionals across areas of responsibility
• With leadership, develop goals, perform personnel evaluations and make recommendations for personnel.
• Promote and maintain high-quality customer service. Train and provide feedback regularly on technical and customer service issues to assigned staff members.
• Serve as a technical resource for Information systems and leadership of other departments.
• Responsible for monitoring solutions to achieve IT scorecard goals and corporate goals.
• Define team goals, Key Performance Indicators, and performance metrics aligned to organizational objectives; Track KPIs, Scorecards, Metrics, Process Improvements including Productivity, Standards, Automation, Data Protection and Recovery, Performance to goals, and Rolling Action Item Lists.
• Develop and present operational dashboards, executive reporting, and board-level metrics as needed.
• Recommend improvements based on trends or operational issues; may develop requirements as necessary.
• Drive continuous service improvement across the portfolio of responsibility through process standardization, automation, and tooling enhancements.
• Build and manage relationships with internal stakeholders including Security, Compliance, Enterprise Architecture, and Business Operations.
• Manage vendor relationships, contracts, and service level agreements for tools and managed services within scope.
• Participate in after-hours incident response and on-call escalation rotation as needed.
• Ensure all services under portfolio have documentation, including run and build books; ensure accuracy and currency of service documentation.
• Drive and/or support introduction of new IT services, improvement of security, stability, performance, and usability of existing services
• Research and analyze procedural problems and provide recommendations for improvements and changes.
• Work with leadership on hardware and software evaluation; recommend and provide justifications for new purchases.
• Produce a variety of weekly and monthly operational reports for management.
• Assist department leadership in developing tactical and strategic product, services and/or programs to support IT and business goals (financial, quality, production, customer service, operational efficiency, market share, etc.).
• The position requires a full-time work schedule. Full-time is defined as working at least 40 hours per week, plus any overtime as requested or needed to perform job responsibilities.
• Perform all other duties as assigned.

REQUIRED COMPETENCIES

Required Job Skills

• Strong knowledge of Healthcare payer environment (BCBS, health plan, managed care organization).
• Familiarity with HIPAA compliance requirements and healthcare data security standards.
• Working knowledge of EDI X12 healthcare transactions and trading partner operations (837, 834, 835, 277CA).
• Strong knowledge of IT infrastructure technologies
• Strong understanding of ITIL frameworks, change management, and incident/problem management processes
• Experience with observability and monitoring platforms (Dynatrace, Splunk, SolarWinds, or equivalent).
• Advanced backup/recovery proficiency
• Advanced proficiency in administration and implementation of monitoring platforms
• Intermediate proficiency in spreadsheet, database and word processing software
• Solid understanding of components such as network, server, OS, database, middleware and client
• Knowledge in current technical architectures

Required Professional Competencies

• Ability to take appropriate risks, using available data.
• Ability to build synergy with a diverse team in an ever-changing environment
• Anticipate downstream technical, organizational and user needs and steer deliver teams to appropriately factor in considerations.
• Customer service skills to deal with sensitive and difficult stakeholder situations
• Ability to evaluate problems and determine hardware/software origin and then determine appropriate solution or escalation
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to translate technical complexity for executive audiences.
• Independent thinker with strong oral, verbal and interpersonal communication skills
• Strong leadership, collaboration, and influencing skills are required. Must have the ability to persuade and build consensus cross-functionally as an evangelist in a team oriented fashion
• Work effectively with management, technical leaders, architects, system administrators, and users to design and deliver successful solutions.
• The ability to work well in a team environment, and be capable of building and maintaining positive relationships with other staff, departments, and customers
• Able to operate at varying levels of abstraction including business and product strategy, design, and implementation
• Strong understanding of information systems, business processes and the key drivers and measures for success
• Strong analytical and decision making skills
• Ability to prepare written proposals and deliver presentations.
• Maintain confidentiality and privacy

Required Leadership Experience and Competencies

• Provide leadership, promote teamwork, meet objectives and exercise independent judgment
• Experience leading and implementing projects and working collaboratively with other departments levels
• Ability to prioritize tasks and work with multiple priorities, sometimes under limited time constraints
• Experience working collaboratively with other departments and levels of administration
• Strong organizational and management skills

PREFERRED COMPETENCIES

Preferred Job Skills

• Expert knowledge of operating systems and systems networking and communication techniques
• Experience with cloud platforms (Azure and AWS preferred) and hybrid infrastructure environments
• Knowledge of ActiveBatch, SSIS, or enterprise job scheduling platforms
• ITIL v4 certification, PMP, or equivalent

Preferred Professional Competencies

• Demonstrate flexibility, anticipate customer needs and communicate in a manner consistent with business strategy
• Able to cope with multiple priorities and high customer expectations and bridge the demands between internal and external customers
• Advanced tactical planning and decision analysis skills.
• Advanced understanding of information systems, business processes and key drivers and measures for success
• Advanced analytical and diagnostic skills dealing with issues that are often novel and not readily defined, lack known precedent or appear contradictory.
• Develop solutions by applying accepted processes or create new approaches to leverage technology from abstract information.
• Advanced understanding of HIPAA transactions and privacy requirements
• Presentation and public speaking abilities
• Project management skills
• Conceptualize new business architecture and infrastructure

Preferred Leadership Experience and Competencies

• Identify resources and training needs while fostering opportunities for staff growth
• Promote and support the overall quality principles and company quality program
• Empower associates at all levels and encourage innovation
• Develop an enthusiastic and positive work environment
• Negotiation and influencing skills with the ability to create win/win situations
• Development and application of budgeting concepts, processes and procedures
• Resource management skills

Our Commitment

AZ Blue does not discriminate in hiring or employment on the basis of race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, protected veteran status or any other protected group.

Thank you for your interest in Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona. If interested in this position, please apply.