Position Overview

The Director, People & Culture Project & Process Excellence is responsible for leading initiative execution, ensuring strategic priorities are translated into scalable, sustainable business outcomes.

This role serves as the operational integrator for the P&C organization—bringing visibility to priorities, identifying dependencies, mitigating risks, and ensuring initiatives are designed and delivered with consistency, discipline, and measurable impact.

A core responsibility of this position is leading P&C process design and transformation. The Director applies structured process improvement methodologies to simplify work, eliminate friction, improve employee and manager experiences. We don't build processes, we build experiences.

This leader must be known for building trusted partnerships, aligning diverse stakeholders around shared outcomes, and answering the question, “How do we make this happen?”

What You'll Do:
Project Strategy & Execution

• Drive highly complex P&C initiatives across multiple workstreams while maintaining visibility into interdependencies, resource constraints, sequencing, risks, and organizational impacts.
• Foster collaboration across teams with differing priorities by creating clarity, building consensus, and maintaining momentum.
• Bring exceptional organizational agility and systems thinking to P&C initiatives.
• Integrate change management into program execution by identifying stakeholder impacts, assessing organizational readiness, mitigating adoption risks, and ensuring employees and leaders are prepared for new processes, technologies, and ways of working.
• Champion continuous improvement and operational excellence as foundational capabilities for the People & Culture function.

Process Design & Operational Excellence

• Lead process design, redesign, and continuous improvement efforts
• Think holistically about how people, process, technology, and data intersect.
• Facilitate current-state assessments, future-state design sessions, stakeholder workshops, and implementation planning.
• Develop standardized process frameworks, governance models, documentation standards, and operational measures that enable consistency across the P&C organization.
• Ensure process design aligns with technology capabilities, data requirements, AI and automation opportunities, and business objectives.

Mergers & Acquisitions

• Project lead the collective P&C workstreams on M&A deals. Partner with the business, HRBP, and P&C leadership to execute a smooth integration into Zelis.
• Direct the planning, coordination, and delivery of deals by establishing governance, managing timelines, mitigating risks, and driving accountability across multiple stakeholders and functional teams.
• Partner with P&C Centers of Excellence, Operations, HR Technology, and business leaders to integrate people, process, and technology solutions, ensuring initiatives are delivered seamlessly with minimal operational disruption and a positive employee experience.
• Own and maintain the P&C M&A playbook, artifact library, and archive for completed M&A transactions.

Relationship Leadership

• Build strong, trusted relationships across the People & Culture organization and with partners throughout the enterprise.
• Serve as a collaborative thought partner who brings structure to ambiguity and helps P&C navigate complex challenges.
• Influence without direct authority by establishing credibility, demonstrating sound judgment, and consistently delivering results.
• Create an environment of partnership, transparency, and shared accountability across functions.

What You'll Bring to Zelis:

• Bachelor’s degree in Human Resources, Organizational Development, Business, or related field; Masters in related field preferred
• Typically, 12+ years of progressive leadership experience in HR, Operations, Consulting, Business Transformation, PMO, or Operational Excellence; previous HR experience preferred
• Demonstrated expertise leading large scale process design and business process transformation initiative, as well as complex cross-functional programs with multiple concurrent initiatives
• M&A integration experience required; strong understanding of M&A complexities for HR
• Requires proficiency using AI tools skillfully with an understanding of how to develop/create intelligent prompts and/or agents.
• Advanced proficiency in AI-enabled PM tools and data-driven decision frameworks.
• Exceptional stakeholder management, facilitation, communication, and executive influencing skills.

Please note at this time we are unable to proceed with candidates who require visa sponsorship now or in the future.

Location and Workplace Flexibility

Zelis is headquartered in the U.S., with multiple locations across the country and in Hyderabad, India. Check out our locations to learn more about our offices. All employee work locations are based on the needs of the position and are determined by the Leadership team. In-office work and activities vary based on work and team objectives in accordance with Company policies.

While location expectations vary by role, candidates within approximately 50 miles of a U.S. office are generally preferred to support collaboration when needed. Our hybrid approach is flexible, and in-office presence is guided by team and business needs rather than a fixed weekly schedule.

Base Salary Range

$139,000.00 - $176,700.00

At Zelis we are committed to providing fair and equitable compensation packages. The base salary range allows us to make an offer that considers multiple individualized factors, including experience, education, qualifications, as well as job-related and industry-related knowledge and skills, etc. Base pay is just one part of our Total Rewards package, which may also include discretionary bonus plans, commissions, or other incentives depending on the role.

Zelis’ full-time associates are eligible for a highly competitive benefits package as well, which demonstrates our commitment to our employees’ health, well-being, and financial protection. The US-based benefits include a 401k plan with employer match, flexible paid time off, holidays, parental leaves, life and disability insurance, and health benefits including medical, dental, vision, and prescription drug coverage.