The Contract Manager III (CM III) is responsible for providing contract management, vendor governance, RFP lifecycle support, and program coordination across a diverse portfolio of national agreements and strategic vendor relationships. This role serves as a key business partner to internal stakeholders and external vendors, ensuring contract performance, compliance, operational excellence, and alignment with organizational objectives.
The CM III manages day-to-day contract administration, supports RFP activities, coordinates governance processes, and oversees vendor performance management across programs such as dental, fitness, supplemental benefits, international travel assistance, and other ancillary services. The position requires strong project management, relationship management, communication, analytical, and organizational skills to successfully support contract lifecycle management and vendor oversight activities.
The CM III acts as a subject matter expert and operational lead to their contract portfolio, collaborating with cross-functional stakeholders including business leaders, legal, compliance, finance, and operational teams to optimize vendor partnerships, mitigate risk, improve processes, and drive value realization.
Job Summary:
In addition to the responsibilities listed below, this position is also responsible for drafting and/or consulting with the contracting team on standard contract templates and language; auditing contracts and databases for accuracy and responding to inquiries about standard contract templates and language; compiling support documentation to ensure completion of internal processes from draft to audit; researching contract rates and services; participating in the collaboration with assigned services line to improve access and availability and service delivery expansion; completing tasks to monitor provider programs in Pay for Performance Agreements, Pay for Quality Agreements, Value Based Purchasing Contracts, and Total Cost of Care; and in some instances acting as the custodian for the contracting book of record following legal and regulatory guidelines.

Essential Responsibilities:

• Pursues effective relationships with others by proactively providing resources, information, advice, and expertise with coworkers and members. Listens to, seeks, and addresses performance feedback; provides mentoring to team members. Pursues self-development; creates plans and takes action to capitalize on strengths and develop weaknesses; influences others through technical explanations and examples. Adapts to and learns from change, challenges, and feedback; demonstrates flexibility in approaches to work; helps others adapt to new tasks and processes. Supports and responds to the needs of others to support a business outcome.
• Completes work assignments autonomously by applying up-to-date expertise in subject area to generate creative solutions; ensures all procedures and policies are followed; leverages an understanding of data and resources to support projects or initiatives. Collaborates cross-functionally to solve business problems; escalates issues or risks as appropriate; communicates progress and information. Supports, identifies, and monitors priorities, deadlines, and expectations. Identifies, speaks up, and implements ways to address improvement opportunities for team.
• Supports continuous improvement efforts by: organizing provider, claims, and contracting data to assist the team in identifying and/or consulting on continuous improvement opportunities across the contract ecosystem (e.g., identifying business and operational disparities between organizational and provider expectations, constraints, and risks to accessible care, building and maintaining relationships); engaging in the implementation of process improvement initiatives to aid providers and business goals; and may also include supporting standard and non-standard analyses of provider and market data to develop recommendations for improvement initiatives.
• Ensures contract commitments are met by: organizing provider data in appropriate data platforms and supporting the consultation of provider compliance; documenting provider activities and/or supporting the collaboration with alternate stakeholders to ensure compliance with contract terms and conditions; and following guidelines to ensure provider compliance with state and federal regulations as well as KP policies and procedures.
• Supports contract strategy development by: executing tasks to support strategies that improve access to patient care while managing outside service costs, with minimal supervision; collaborating with team members to provide consultation on local service delivery planning to aid in the achievement of provider priorities and strategies; engaging in collaborative cross-functional workgroups and/or executing on strategies to meet the unique needs of diverse stakeholders; and participating in and/or beginning to conduct peer training for new hires and contingent workers (e.g., establishing contract language, determining payment rate parameters, defining workflow and business processes, and ensuring cross-training across all service lines).
• Supports the growth of the Provider Network by: researching and evaluating potential partners/alliances for assigned service area to fill service gaps or decrease costs in current service offerings; developing trusting relationships with providers to understand their role in the external network; serving as a liaison between providers and KP by completing communication tasks independently (e.g., contract compliance such as access, availability, referral operations, and/or supporting member complaints); and supporting provider site visits, daily interactions, and ad hoc meetings by organizing components of itineraries and agendas, gathering credentialing materials, and/or supporting the initiation of this process.
• Contributes to provider satisfaction by: using comprehensive foundational knowledge of provider/contract operations to consult on issues that arise from contract configuration/interpretation and/or related to claims/disputes, billing, payment, reimbursement, other operational issues, and/or directories; contributing to tasks to ensure requests for information, questions, and problems are identified, documented, and addressed in a timely manner; and creating training materials to aid provider education and orientation on health plan systems, processes, and/or credentialing.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities: (Core)

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

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities: (Functional)

• Contract Management
• Business Relationship Management
• Compliance Management
• Computer Literacy
• Health Care Reimbursement
• Interpersonal Skills
• Presentation Skills
• Quality Assurance Process
• Time Management
• Trend Analysis
• Written Communication

Minimum Qualifications:

• High School Diploma or GED AND five (5) years of experience in health care delivery or operations in a managed care environment, customer relationship management, or a directly related field OR Minimum five (5) years of experience in health care delivery or operations in a managed care environment, customer relationship management, or a directly related field including a minimum one (1) year of experience working in a corporate or business office environment.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Two (2) years of project management and/or process improvement experience or related certification (e.g. PMP, Lean Six Sigma).
• Two (2) years of experience with health care regulatory compliance and filing, contract writing, health care operations, legal research, or insurance/health plan governance experience.

Primary Location: California,Pasadena,Green Street/IDS
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
Employee Status: Regular
Worker Location: Flexible
Employee Group/Union Affiliation: NUE-PO-01|NUE|Non Union Employee
Job Level: Individual Contributor
Department: Po/Ho Corp - National Provider Contracting - 0308
Pay Range: $87200 - $112750 / year Kaiser Permanente strives to offer a market competitive total rewards package and is committed to pay equity and transparency. The posted pay range is based on possible base salaries for the role and does not reflect the full value of our total rewards package. Actual base pay determined at offer will be based on labor market data, internal alignment, and a candidate's years of relevant work experience, education, certifications, skills, and geographic location.
Travel: Yes, 20 % of the Time