Director, Value Stream Continuous Improvement

This Director role will focus on Value Stream Continuous Improvement and reports to the Head of Payments Technology Center of Excellence. You will be responsible for leading initiatives that drive measurable business value, operational resilience, and organizational excellence. This role is critical to the Payments Technology Center of Excellence effort to support the entire technology leadership team to:

• Modernize the environment

• Scale the Operation to comfortably meet revenue growth

• Collaborative innovation

• Drive growth with a stable platform and efficient integration expansion 

• Deliver against our product roadmap 

• Modernization of our payments platform

The Director, Value Stream Continuous Improvement will be responsible for leading cross-functional initiatives that drive measurable business value, operational resilience, and organizational excellence. This position collaborates with the entire Center of Excellence to emphasize the integration of Lean/Agile practices, process improvement, and value stream mapping with key objectives that drive the integration of value stream mapping, PDLC/SDLC governance, and Most Important Things (MITs), Key Performance Indications (KPIs), and success measures into DevOps practices, governance, and continuous improvement.

Key areas of focus include:

• Orchestrate continuous improvement initiatives to optimize the Payments Value Stream so that the Payments organization is positioned to deliver on its business and technology goals

•  Lead Value Stream Mapping initiatives, emphasizing systems thinking, continuous improvement, and lean-agile principles to build and reinforce predictable and resilient capabilities for delivery and operations

• Ensure the technology platform is positioned to support business growth while maintaining a balance between speed of delivery, quality, and risk management.

•  Instill a culture of continuous improvement and innovation within the hearts and minds our teams throughout the organization

•  Lead the execution of payments technology initiatives, overseeing the delivery management function to ensure efficient, high-quality execution of key projects.

• Define and track KPIs that measure customer value, platform scalability, platform performance, efficiency, and business impact.

• Mitigate operational risk through robust governance frameworks and streamlined processes.

• Encourage a culture of continuous improvement to ensure ongoing innovation and competitiveness.

• Act as a key driver of transformation, ensuring alignment between operational processes, technology, and strategic business outcomes.

What You’ll Do

• Encourage teams to adopt a platform/product-owner mentality, making decisions as if they own the Profit & Loss (P&L).

• Promote rapid, light-weight and iterative experimental approaches to continuous improvement initiatives

• Collaborate with engineering and operations teams to optimize deployment processes, improve uptime, and ensure that platform performance KPIs are met.

• Monitor and manage KPIs to ensure those target measures can and will be met and continue to measure what’s most important for the organization success measures that reflect both product and platform performance.

• Foster a culture of ownership within and across teams, ensuring that process improvements are fit-for-purpose, sustainable, and align with the broader P&L organizational goals.

• Align Value Streams with product roadmaps, ensuring seamless integration of platform performance with customer-facing initiatives.

• Incorporate product management principles to align Value Streams with customer value and business outcomes.

• Empower teams to think beyond processes and own their outcomes, driving decision-making that supports innovation, customer impact, and revenue growth.

• Facilitate cross-functional collaboration across Value Streams to establish a strong coalition of change champions that will drive the maximization of customer and business value. optimize delivery pipelines for maximum customer and business value.

• Identify people change management opportunities and facilitate engagement and learning sessions for adoption.

• Embed people change management into transformation initiatives.

• Drive architecture and process-oriented design to enhance scalability and efficiency.

• Build a people-first culture that aligns with global CoE values, emphasizing career growth and motivation.

• This is a people leader role

• Travel is required, based on programmatic priorities.

What You’ll Bring to Zelis

• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Proven ability to align and inspire diverse teams, ensuring alignment with strategic organizational goals.

• End-to-End Process Understanding: Expertise in analyzing complex systems and workflows to identify inefficiencies and craft effective solutions.

• Customer Success Focus: A “quality-first” approach and test-driven mindset to prioritize outcomes that enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty.

• Process Optimization Expertise: Strong ability to pinpoint weaknesses and implement sustainable improvements with measurable results.

• Continuous Improvement Leadership: Passionate about elevating organizational performance to remain competitive and innovative.

• Solution-Oriented Mindset: Skilled in identifying challenges, finding creative solutions, and driving their effective implementation.

• Governance: Proven experience in technology governance, compliance, and risk management particularly within a payments or high-volume transaction environment.

• Lean Transformation: Strong knowledge of Lean values and principles and organization transformation initiatives

• Technology Transformation: Experience in technology transformation programs is advantageous

• Strategic Thinking: Ability to develop and execute a long-term vision for the payments platform while driving operational excellence.

• Leadership and Communication: Exceptional leadership and communication skills, with the ability to inspire teams and influence stakeholders.

• Problem-Solving and Decision-Making: Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to make data-driven decisions under pressure.

• Education/Experience: Typically holds a bachelor's or master’s degree or equivalent 10+ years of experience in technology leadership and process transformation.

• Licenses/Certifications (preferred): Lean, Agile, Product Owner, ITIL, Scaled Agile Framework, Process Mapping, Design Thinking, Business/Enterprise/Process-oriented Architecture

Zelis is modernizing the healthcare financial experience by providing a connected platform that bridges the gaps and aligns interests across payers, providers, and healthcare consumers. This platform serves more than 750 payers, including the top 5 national health plans, BCBS insurers, regional health plans, TPAs and self-insured employers, and millions of healthcare providers and consumers. Zelis sees across the system to identify, optimize, and solve problems holistically with technology built by healthcare experts – driving real, measurable results for clients.

Commitment to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging 
At Zelis, we champion diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in all aspects of our operations. We embrace the power of diversity and create an environment where people can bring their authentic and best selves to work. We know that a sense of belonging is key not only to your success at Zelis, but also to your ability to bring your best each day.

Equal Employment Opportunity  
Zelis is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. 

We encourage members of traditionally underrepresented communities to apply, even if you do not believe you 100% fit the qualifications of the position, including women, LGBTQIA people, people of color, and people with disabilities.  

Accessibility Support 

We are dedicated to ensuring our application process is accessible to all candidates. If you are a qualified individual with a disability or a disabled veteran and require a reasonable accommodation with any part of the application and/or interview process, please email [email protected].  

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