Associate Product Owner - Network (Open to hiring at the Product Owner level)

Company Description

Why Wellmark?

We are a mutual insurance company owned by our policy holders across Iowa and South Dakota, and we’ve built our reputation on over 80 years’ worth of trust. We are not motivated by profits. We are motivated by the well-being of our friends, family, and neighbors–our members. If you’re passionate about joining an organization working hard to put its members first, to provide best-in-class service, and one that is committed to sustainability and innovation, consider applying today! 

Learn more about our unique benefit offerings here. 

Want to know more? You can learn about life at Wellmark here.

Job Description

This opportunity is focused on supporting the Payment Integrity product team within the Care Optimization ART.  

The Payment Integrity team facilitates accurate claim payments across Wellmark by ensuring all payments are made to the right benefit program, to the right provider, for the right services at the right time to enable Wellmark to realize the most accurate and competitive total cost of care for our members. 

This includes the oversight of complex systems and functionality that ensure all value streams are able to run effectively and efficiently. Success in this role will require strong cross-functional collaboration and strategic partnerships. The Product Owner will work closely with various agile teams and will need to effectively collaborate, build consensus, and drive initiatives with key support teams across multiple departments. The Product Owner develops and conveys the product’s vision to the agile team, outlining and prioritizing work based on business value realization metrics. The ideal candidate will prioritize high-value work and align with our program's performance objectives to maximize impact and efficiency.   

Job Leveling Note: This role can be filled at an Associate Product Owner or Product Owner level depending on work experience, skills, and demonstrated ability.  We invite you to apply whether you have the minimum experience required described below or if you have much more experience! 

Qualifications

Qualifications

Preferred

• Experience executing Wellmark network strategy.  
• Prior experience leading a cross-functional team (either formal or informal).  
• Product development, product management, or similar experience that reflects general knowledge of the product development lifecycle (including measurement and management), strategic planning, and ability to collaborate with multi-disciplinary teams to create innovative, data-driven solutions. Understanding of customer (client and member) needs and ability to translate these into competitive products and services.  
• Bachelor's degree.  
• Prior experience in a Product Owner role operating within a SAFe organization, including demonstrated experience with agile and/or lean product management competencies of value measurement, optimization, and eliminating waste.  
• Experience with agile business analysis, including documentation of features, user stories, and acceptance criteria.  
• Exposure to negotiation skills and techniques.  
• Experience using agile requirements management tools (e.g., Jira or Azure DevOps).  

Associate Product Owner Minimum Required Qualifications:   

• Bachelor's degree or direct and applicable work experience.  
• Minimum 3+ years’ experience in a combination of:  
• Wellmark business acumen for specific product or division of this role.  
• Demonstrates ownership and commitment to projects; drives tasks and milestones toward successful completion and holds themselves accountable for project performance.  
• SAFe agile certification (e.g., Product Owner) obtained within 3 months.  
• Possess or is willing to pursue certified Product Owner Certification.  
• Experience successfully leading others through change.  
• Demonstrated facilitation and influencing skills to drive decision making among stakeholders with diverse perspectives and priorities.  
• Ability to work well in a team environment and be capable of building and maintaining relationships with other team members, departments, and customers.  
• Demonstrated ability to communicate complex information in a condensed manner to various internal stakeholders verbally and external vendors in writing to achieve shared vision and goals.  
• Strong problem solving and analytical skills.  
• Ability to identify risks and deploy appropriate mitigation strategies to meet stakeholder/functional requirements.  
• Strong group facilitation skills and presentation skills demonstrated through successful experience.  
• Consulting skills required with excellent communication, collaboration, and interpersonal skills.  
• Proficient in Microsoft Office suite.  
• Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) knowledge.  
• Proven project management experience including managing project scope and schedule, utilizing industry standard project management methodologies.  
• Eliciting detailed business requirements.  
• Experience in a change management capacity aligned to an industry standard methodology.  
• Exposure to the development and execution of user acceptance test plans, scenarios, and cases utilizing industry standard testing methodologies.  

Product Owner Level Minimum Required Qualifications:  

• Bachelor's degree or direct and applicable work experience.  
• Minimum of 4 years of experience working with or leading agile teams through the delivery of value to the product’s customer, including experience using agile requirements management tools (e.g., Jira or Azure DevOps).  
• Minimum of 1 year demonstrated experience in Product Owner-type role, typically gained through membership of a defined product team within Wellmark.  
• SAFe agile certification (e.g., Product Owner).  

Additional Information

Job Responsibilities

1. Maximize the product's value and the work of the agile team by working with them to ensure they have a clear vision of the priority and value of the work.  
2. Act as a strong, informal, dotted-line leader and mentor to the agile team through effective two-way communication, helping employees learn new skills, identifying and managing resistance, and being an advocate.  
3. Serve as the voice of the customer by creating a shared understanding of the product vision and customer needs through consistent communications with the team.   
4. Active leader in the agile team’s scrum events, including agile ceremonies such as stand-ups, story refinements, backlog grooming, and team retrospectives.  
5. Lead iteration review meetings to demonstrate the outcomes achieved to the product team’s stakeholders or customers.   
6. Ensure the team understands the product priorities and executes the highest value work through lean and agile product prioritization methods (e.g, WSJF, MoSCoW).  
7. Obtain insights, prioritize, and balance multiple stakeholder priorities, and synthesize complex information, to maintain product team alignment with the vision.  
8. Partner with stakeholders and customers to curate the product vision, product stack, and features to ensure that the next increment of value is executed.  
9. Author the product roadmap features by creating well-defined product requirements, including features, user stories, and acceptance criteria.  
10. Partner with stakeholders to assess value and prioritize features and stories to ensure work focuses on those with a maximum value aligned to the product strategy.  

An Equal Opportunity Employer

The policy of Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield is to recruit, hire, train and promote individuals in all job classifications without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, veteran status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other characteristic protected by law.

Applicants requiring a reasonable accommodation due to a disability at any stage of the employment application process should contact us at careers@wellmark.com

Please inform us if you meet the definition of a "Covered DoD official".

At this time, Wellmark is not considering applicants for this position that require any type of immigration sponsorship (additional work authorization or permanent work authorization) now or in the future to work in the United States. This includes, but IS NOT LIMITED TO: F1-OPT, F1-CPT, H-1B, TN, L-1, J-1, etc. For additional information around work authorization needs please refer to the following resources:Nonimmigrant Workers and Green Card for Employment-Based Immigrants