Blue Shield Of California

Program Manager, Principal - IFP Performance Optimization

Blue Shield Of California$120K — $145K *
Healthcare
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience required.
  • Minimum of 10 years in relevant roles required.
  • Experience leading cross-functional initiatives with measurable outcomes essential.
  • Healthcare sector experience is mandatory; health plan experience preferred.
  • Proven ability in root-cause analysis and action plan development needed.
  • Experience in managing governance models and performance updates required.
  • Strong ability to influence without direct authority essential.

Responsibilities

  • Identify and prioritize high-impact performance improvement opportunities within IFP.
  • Analyze performance gaps and lead root cause analysis to determine business impact.
  • Collaborate with cross-functional teams to design and launch targeted interventions.
  • Track intervention impacts, measure ROI, and refine strategies based on outcomes.
  • Strengthen performance governance through various review forums and dashboards.
  • Coordinate with various teams to support regional affordability and provider performance.
  • Develop executive-ready materials to communicate insights and trends succinctly.

Benefits

  • Flexible workplace model promoting work-life balance.
  • Commitment to employee well-being with accommodations for medical conditions.
  • Leadership development opportunities for personal and professional growth.
Full Job Description
Job Description

Your Role

The Individual and Family Plans (IFP) Performance Optimization team is accountable for end-to-end performance management, improving affordability, and driving targeted optimization to deliver measurable, sustainable IFP outcomes. The Program Manager, Principal - IFP Performance Optimization will report to the Sr. Director, IFP Performance Optimization. In this role you will be responsible for identifying, prioritizing, and driving high-impact opportunities to improve IFP performance across cost, access, quality, growth, member experience, and affordability. This role serves as a strategic execution lead for underperforming areas, translating IFP priorities into measurable action plans, driving root-cause analysis, aligning cross-functional partners, and ensuring interventions deliver sustainable business outcomes.

Our leadership model is about developing great leaders at all levels and creating opportunities for our people to grow - personally, professionally, and financially. We are looking for leaders that are energized by creative and critical thinking, building and sustaining high-performing teams, getting results the right way, and fostering continuous learning.

Responsibilities

Your Work

In this role, you will:
  • Identify and prioritize high-impact opportunities to improve IFP performance across cost, access, quality, growth, member experience, and affordability, with a focus on areas of underperformance and measurable results
  • Analyze performance gaps against plan, benchmarks, OKRs, KPIs, regional targets, and contractual expectations; lead deep dives to identify root causes and quantify business impact
  • Partner cross-functionally to design, launch, and manage targeted interventions with clear ownership, milestones, success metrics, and expected financial or operational impact
  • Track intervention impact, measure ROI, evaluate leading and lagging indicators, and refine strategies in real time-scaling successful approaches and adjusting actions when results are not materializing
  • Support and strengthen performance governance through Pulse of IFP, MBRs, OKRs, KPI reviews, dashboards, decision forums, and leadership updates that drive visibility and accountability
  • Coordinate with finance, actuarial, network, HQA, clinical, pharmacy, and provider partners to support CoHC savings, regional affordability efforts, network evolution, provider performance, and pricing-related priorities
  • Partner with quality, risk adjustment, care management, digital, marketing, and operations teams to improve member engagement, health outcomes, PCP relationship development, care program utilization, and performance against Covered California expectations
  • Develop executive-ready materials that clearly communicate the "so what," performance trends, risks, decisions, tradeoffs, mitigation plans, and expected outcomes for IFP leadership
  • Influence matrixed teams without direct authority, clarify ownership, remove barriers, escalate decisions, and ensure workstreams remain connected to IFP priorities and measurable outcomes
  • Translate complex data, dashboards, and partner updates into actionable insights, concise narratives, and decision-ready recommendations for leaders and functional partners


Qualifications

Your Knowledge and Experience
  • Requires a bachelor's degree or High School Diploma/GED and 4 years of additional relevant experience in lieu of a degree
  • Requires 10 years of prior relevant experience
  • Requires proven experience leading complex, cross-functional initiatives that deliver measurable financial, operational, quality, customer experience, or growth outcomes
  • Requires healthcare experience; prefer health plan experience with a strong understanding of business drivers, including cost of healthcare, utilization, provider performance, network strategy, risk adjustment, quality, member engagement, or regulated market performance
  • Requires demonstrated ability to conduct root-cause analysis, synthesize data, identify underperforming areas, and translate insights into prioritized action plans
  • Requires experience building and managing governance models, dashboards, operating rhythms, OKRs, KPIs, risk logs, decision frameworks, and executive-level performance updates
  • Requires the ability to operate in ambiguity, manage competing priorities, influence senior stakeholders, and drive accountability across matrixed teams without direct authority
  • Requires executive level meeting facilitation, storytelling, and the ability to communicate the "so what" behind performance trends and recommendation


About the Team

Our Workplace Model

We believe in fostering a workplace environment that balances purposeful in-person collaboration with flexibility - providing clear expectations while respecting the diverse needs of our workforce. Our workplace model is designed around intentional in-person interaction, collaboration, connection, creativity and flexibility:
  • For most teams, this means coming into the office two days per week.
  • Employees living more than 50 miles from an office location, out of state employees, and employees in certain member-facing roles should work with their manager to determine in-office time based on business need.
  • For employees with medical conditions that may impact their ability to work in-office, we are committed to engaging in an interactive process and providing reasonable accommodations to ensure their work environment is conducive to their success and well-being.

The Company reserves the right to require more presence in the office based on business needs, and requirements are subject to change with periodic reviews.

Physical Requirements:

Office Environment - roles involving part to full time schedule in Office Environment. Based in our physical offices and work from home office/deskwork - Activity level: Sedentary, frequency most of work day.

Please click here for further physical requirement detail.

About Blue Shield Of California

Blue Shield of California is a not-for-profit health plan provider that has been providing Californians with access to high-quality healthcare for over 80 years. The company offers a range of health insurance products and services to individuals, families, and employers. Blue Shield of California is committed to improving the health and wellbeing of its members and the communities it serves. The company is also committed to sustainability and has implemented a number of initiatives to reduce its environmental impact.
Learn more about Blue Shield Of California
Size
7,000 employees
Industry
Founded
1981

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