Vendor and Supplier Manager IV

About the Role

The Supplier/Vendor Manager is responsible for managing and optimizing relationships with third-party suppliers that support Payment Integrity programs focused on identifying, validating, and recovering claim overpayments. Serving as the primary business lead for contracted vendors, this role ensures supplier performance aligns with contractual requirements, recovery goals, operational standards, and compliance expectations.

The Supplier/Vendor Manager collaborates closely with cross-functional teams, including Payment Integrity, Claims, Audit, Compliance, and Operations, to monitor vendor effectiveness, address escalated issues, drive continuous improvement initiatives, and maximize financial recovery outcomes.

The ideal candidate brings strong expertise in vendor management, healthcare claims processing, medical claims auditing, and data analysis, with a proven track record of enhancing supplier performance and delivering measurable business results.

Responsibilities

• Promotes learning in others by proactively providing and/or developing information, resources, advice, and expertise with coworkers and members; builds relationships with cross-functional/external stakeholders and customers.
• Listens to, seeks, and addresses performance feedback; proactively provides actionable feedback to others and to managers.
• Pursues self-development; creates and executes plans to capitalize on strengths and develop weaknesses; leads by influencing others through technical explanations and examples and provides options and recommendations.
• Adopts new responsibilities; adapts to and learns from change, challenges, and feedback; demonstrates flexibility in approaches to work; champions change and helps others adapt to new tasks and processes.
• Facilitates team collaboration to support a business outcome; completes work assignments autonomously and supports business-specific projects by applying expertise in subject area and business knowledge to generate creative solutions.
• Collaborates cross-functionally and/or externally to achieve effective business decisions; provides recommendations and solves complex problems; escalates high-priority issues or risks, as appropriate; monitors progress and results.
• Supports the development of work plans to meet business priorities and deadlines; identifies resources to accomplish priorities and deadlines.
• Identifies, speaks up, and capitalizes on improvement opportunities across teams; uses influence to guide others and engages stakeholders to achieve appropriate solutions.
• Delivers, executes, and sustains process improvement (PI) engagements including kaizen by leveraging the appropriate methods and tools to ensure the development of stakeholder capabilities for process change and improvement.
• Applies data-driven PI principles, tools, and problem-solving methods including Lean/Six Sigma concepts and techniques.
• Builds high-performance team capabilities to harness collective intelligence and take quick action to test ideas and achieve real-time business results.
• Develops and designs process architecture and recommendation documents, including presentations, process maps, supporting metrics, business requirements, and related impact analyses.
• Shares accountability for realization of results with process owners; presents results and recommendations as appropriate.
• Serves as a consultant to stakeholders and process owners by providing consultation and trusted partnership to drive process improvements.
• Develops management systems to sustain process changes; develops stakeholder process improvement leadership competencies; provides training and guidance to stakeholders.
• Provides ongoing coaching to build a continuous improvement mindset and capabilities that drive results.
• Contributes to strategic planning and supports organizational alignment and prioritization of process improvement initiatives by defining, developing, and evaluating performance metrics, standards, and methods to establish process success.
• Collaborates with multiple stakeholders, often with competing/conflicting objectives, to ensure cohesive and reachable metrics; refines strategic plans and performance metrics as appropriate.
• Manages assigned initiatives or portfolio to ensure delivery of measurable results and alignment with strategic objectives.
• Serves as an advocate for continuous improvement by keeping abreast of industry practices, standards, and benchmarks; attends and participates in roadshows, conferences, and speaking events.
• Contributes to the ongoing enhancement of process improvement practices, standards, and methods across the organization; serves as an advocate to ensure continuous learning and improvement is championed as a people strategy.
• Participates in and may lead change management activities associated with process improvement by engaging stakeholders to obtain support and buy-in for changes.
• Partners with management, project champions, and process owners to align process improvement initiatives with business objectives; identifies appropriate change management method and approach.
• Ensures stakeholders embrace a change management mindset, understand intent and purpose, and foster a culture of change.
• Performs data analyses to support process improvement initiatives by identifying appropriate data analysis tools and approach to assess system or process performance.
• Determines suitable data gathering and analysis methods (e.g., process observation, hard data, etc.); defines data requirements and obtains customer agreements, including customer requirements as appropriate.
• Conducts analyses and performs experimental tests; identifies and alleviates risks through data-driven analysis.

Requirements

• Minimum one (1) year of experience in a leadership role with or without direct reports.
• Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Finance, Engineering, Health Care/Public Health Administration, Behavioral/Social/Computer Science, Liberal Arts, Mathematics, or related field and minimum five (5) years of experience in process improvement or a directly related field.
• OR minimum eight (8) years of experience in process improvement or a directly related field.

Preferred Qualifications

• Green Belt Certification (Six Sigma).
• Three (3) years of experience working as a broker or consultant in a market-facing role for health plans.

Skills

• Core: Ambiguity/Uncertainty Management, Attention to Detail, Business Knowledge, Communication, Critical Thinking, Cross-Group Collaboration, Decision Making, Dependability, Diversity/Equity/Inclusion Support, Drives Results, Facilitation Skills, Health Care Industry Knowledge, Influencing Others, Integrity, Learning Agility, Organizational Savvy, Problem Solving, Short- and Long-term Learning & Recall, Teamwork, Topic-Specific Communication.
• Functional: Applied Data Analysis, Business Acumen, Business Process Improvement, Emotional Intelligence, Managing Diverse Relationships, Negotiation, Project Management, Service Focus, Written Communication.

Benefits

Kaiser Permanente strives to offer a market-competitive total rewards package and is committed to pay equity and transparency.

Pay

The posted pay range is $120,700 - $156,090 per year. 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.

Schedule

• 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
• Worker Location: Flexible (Employee location must align with Kaiser Permanente's Authorized States policy)
• Travel: No
• Work Setting: Flexible