Medica

Manage the vendor lifecycle and partner with vendors to drive enterprise alignment, innovation, risk management, and measurable value through data-driven insights. | Requires a bachelor's degree, at least 8 years in vendor management, sourcing, or procurement, and the ability to communicate with and influence senior stakeholders. | Medica is a nonprofit health plan with more than a million members that serves communities in Minnesota, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Missouri, and beyond. We deliver personalized health care experiences and partner closely with providers to ensure members are genuinely cared for.    We're a team that owns our work with accountability, makes data-driven decisions, embraces continuous learning, and celebrates collaboration — because success is a team sport. It's our mission to be there in the moments that matter most for our members and employees. Join us in creating a community of connected care, where coordinated, quality service is the norm and every member feels valued.   The Category Lead role serves as the strategic and operational bridge between Medica and its vendor partners, ensuring alignment with Medica’s sourcing strategy, compliance standards, and enterprise objectives. The role is actively involved in leading key aspects of the vendor lifecycle, including vendor selection, onboarding, performance management, and offboarding, with a focus on driving innovation, managing risk, and delivering measurable value. Through strong cross-functional collaboration and effective partnership with vendors, the role supports informed, data-driven decision-making and continuous improvement across vendor relationships. Operating in a fast-paced and evolving environment, the Vendor Manager plays a critical role in strengthening partnerships, influencing outcomes, and ensuring vendors contribute positively to Medica’s business goals and the needs of the teams served. There are two open Category Lead roles supporting the following business categories: * Operations, Legal & Finance  * Products, Health Services & Human Resources  Key Accountabilities  Lead Vendor Lifecycle & Relationship Management * Lead the full vendor lifecycle, including vendor selection, onboarding, performance reviews, renewals, amendments, and offboarding activities. * Serve as the primary liaison between Medica and assigned vendors, fostering strong relationships, trust, and long-term collaboration. * Facilitate vendor engagement activities such as Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs), strategic planning sessions, and operational check-ins. * Influence vendor counterparts, including senior leaders when appropriate, to drive service improvement, innovation, and issue resolution. Contract Execution, Performance, Risk & Compliance * Partner with ES&P and business units to ensure timely execution of contract renewals, amendments, and terminations. * Monitor vendor performance against contractual obligations, service-level agreements (SLAs), and regulatory requirements. * Track, manage, and support remediation plans, audit findings, and risk mitigation activities in collaboration with internal stakeholders. * Maintain accurate vendor documentation, records, scorecards, and performance dashboards to support transparency and accountability. Vendor Performance Analytics, Reporting & Value Delivery * Analyze vendor performance data, service metrics, and trends to identify performance gaps, risks, and improvement opportunities. * Develop and present reporting on vendor performance, savings achievements, service-level compliance, and value realization. * Partner with ES&P analytics teams to define meaningful performance metrics and dashboards. * Conduct ad-hoc analyses and scenario modeling to support decision-making and prioritization. Strategic Collaboration & Sourcing Partnership * Partner with ES&P sourcing teams on RFI, RFP, and RFQ processes, including vendor evaluations and contract negotiations. * Analyze vendor portfolios to identify overlaps, reduce duplicative spend, and recommend consolidation opportunities where appropriate. * Lead or support cross-functional initiatives requiring coordination across vendors and Medica teams, including Operations, Compliance, Product, and Risk. * Translate vendor insights into actionable recommendations that improve business outcomes and the Medica experience. Vendor Management Practices & Enablement * Educate internal partners on vendor management best practices, tools, and policies. * Apply subject matter expertise to support accurate decision-making, problem resolution, and adherence to vendor management standards. * Share trends, insights, risks, and recommendations with partners to support continuous improvement. Required Qualifications  * Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience in Business, Supply Chain or a related field  * 8+ years of work experience beyond degree in vendor management, sourcing and procurement strategy  * Strong understanding of vendor lifecycle management and sourcing principles  * Experience partnering with cross-functional teams including senior stakeholders and executive business leaders  * Proven ability to influence decisions and deliver measurable business outcomes  * Exceptional communication and presentation skill with an audience of internal and vendor executives   Preferred Qualifications  * Demonstrated ability to leverage market intelligence, analytics and business insights to develop strategies, influence decisions and drive measurable outcomes * Strong understanding of supplier economics, pricing models, and value optimization across complex vendor relationships  * Knowledge of commercial contracting although contracts are managed by a separate function * Proven ability to thrive in a dynamic and evolving environment while effectively managing competing priorities and changing business needs  * Experience leveraging tools such as Workday, Zip, PowerBI, and Microsoft Office products * Industry experience in areas of focus not limited to Operations, Legal, Finance, Products, Health Services and Human Resources  This position is an Office role, which requires an employee to work onsite, on average, 3 days per week. We are open to candidates located near one of the following office locations: Minnetonka, MN, Madison, WI, St. Louis, MO, or Omaha, NE.  The full salary grade for this position is $100,300 - $172,000. While the full salary grade is provided, the typical hiring salary range for this role is expected to be between $100,300 - $150,465. Annual salary range placement will depend on a variety of factors including, but not limited to, education, work experience, applicable certifications and/or licensure, the position's scope and responsibility, internal pay equity and external market salary data.  In addition to base compensation, this position may be eligible for incentive plan compensation in addition to base salary. Medica offers a generous total rewards package that includes competitive medical, dental, vision, PTO, Holidays, paid volunteer time off, 401K contributions, caregiver services and many other benefits to support our employees.   The compensation and benefits information is provided as of the date of this posting. Medica’s compensation and benefits are subject to change at any time, with or without notice, subject to applicable law. Eligibility to work in the US: Medica does not offer work visa sponsorship for this role. All candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States at the time of application. Employment is contingent on verification of identity and eligibility to work in the United States.  We are an Equal Opportunity employer, where all qualified candidates receive consideration for employment indiscriminate of race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, citizenship, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or any other protected characteristic.

Lead design, implementation, and support of scalable enterprise platforms using Kafka, Azure, and Kubernetes with a focus on reliability, automation, and mentoring. | 5+ years in platform engineering or enterprise integration with proficiency in Kafka, Azure Kubernetes Service, CI/CD pipelines, and scripting languages like PowerShell, Bash, or Python. | Medica is a nonprofit health plan with more than a million members that serves communities in Minnesota, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Missouri, and beyond. We deliver personalized health care experiences and partner closely with providers to ensure members are genuinely cared for. We're a team that owns our work with accountability, makes data-driven decisions, embraces continuous learning, and celebrates collaboration — because success is a team sport. It's our mission to be there in the moments that matter most for our members and employees. Join us in creating a community of connected care, where coordinated, quality service is the norm, and every member feels valued. Defining problems, conducting and narrowing research, analyzing criteria, finding, analyzing and applying solutions. Performs other duties as assigned. Medica is seeking a Senior Platform & Integration Engineer to provide technical leadership and hands-on expertise in Kafka, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Kubernetes, Azure cloud services, Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, and cloud-native platform engineering, driving the design, implementation, and support of scalable, secure, and reliable enterprise platforms. This role is ideal for someone who: * Is a platform-focused engineer with deep expertise in event-driven architectures, cloud-native technologies, and integration platforms. * Has extensive hands-on experience administering and supporting Kafka across both on-premises environments and Confluent Cloud. * Excels at designing, building, and operating scalable platforms that enable real-time data processing and microservices orchestration. * Leads technical initiatives through influence, collaboration, and engineering excellence. * Driving platform reliability, automation, observability, and operational maturity across engineering teams. * Balances platform architecture, operational excellence, automation, mentoring, and strategic technology planning. You will work closely with engineering leadership, application development teams, cloud and security teams, infrastructure teams, and enterprise architects to build and evolve Medica's integration and platform capabilities. Performs other duties as assigned. Key Accountabilities * Administer, support, and optimize Kafka platforms across both on-premises environments and Confluent Cloud, ensuring high availability, security, monitoring, and efficient event-streaming capabilities. * Manage and maintain Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Kubernetes platforms, including cluster administration, networking, ingress management, RBAC, autoscaling, secrets management, and platform security. * Serve as an Azure Cloud Administrator responsible for managing Azure services, resolving infrastructure and network connectivity issues, and supporting development teams with Azure resource provisioning, deployment, and configuration. * Design, develop, and maintain robust CI/CD pipelines utilizing Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions to streamline software delivery and platform operations. * Drive automation initiatives through scripting and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) practices to improve provisioning, deployment, and operational efficiency. * Implement and enhance observability and monitoring solutions using Splunk, Dynatrace, Prometheus, and Grafana to ensure platform reliability, availability, and performance. * Lead incident management activities, including troubleshooting, root cause analysis, problem resolution, and continuous service improvement efforts. * Establish and enforce platform governance, operational standards, security controls, and best practices across cloud and integration platforms. * Provide technical guidance, and mentorship in Kafka, Kubernetes, Azure, and DevOps technologies. * Collaborate closely with application, infrastructure, security, and enterprise architecture teams to advance cloud modernization, platform engineering, and digital transformation initiatives. Required Qualifications * Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience in related field * 5 years of work experience beyond degree * 5+ years of in platform engineering, cloud operations, or enterprise integration. * Hands-on expertise with Kafka, Confluent Cloud, AKS/Kubernetes, Azure, Azure DevOps, and GitHub Actions. * Experience with Azure resource management, cloud deployments, and network troubleshooting. * Strong scripting and automation skills (PowerShell, Bash, Python). * Experience with containerization, distributed systems, and deployment strategies. Skills and Abilities * Kafka administration, cluster management, and event-driven architecture design. * Kubernetes and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) platform administration and cloud-native operations. * Azure cloud administration includes management of Azure services, subscriptions, resource groups, networking, storage, and compute resources. * Assisting development and platform teams with provisioning, deployment, and lifecycle management of Azure resources. * Troubleshooting Azure networking and connectivity issues involving VNets, NSGs, Load Balancers, Application Gateway, Private Endpoints, DNS, and hybrid connectivity. * CI/CD pipeline design, DevOps practices, infrastructure automation, and deployment orchestration. * Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Terraform, ARM Templates, and Bicep. * Observability, application monitoring, logging, alerting, and performance optimization. * Networking, security, ingress controllers, RBAC, identity management, and secrets management. * Technical leadership with strong communication, stakeholder collaboration, and cross-functional team coordination. Preferred Qualifications * Terraform, ARM/Bicep, microservices, and event-driven architecture experience. * Healthcare or regulated industry experience. * Azure, Kubernetes, Kafka, or DevOps certifications. * Hybrid-cloud or multi-cloud experience. This position is an Office role, which requires an employee to work onsite at our Minnetonka, MN office, on average, 3 days per week. The full salary grade for this position is $100,300 - $172,000. While the full salary grade is provided, the typical hiring salary range for this role is expected to be between $100,300 - $150,465. Annual salary range placement will depend on a variety of factors including, but not limited to, education, work experience, applicable certifications and/or licensure, the position's scope and responsibility, internal pay equity and external market salary data.  In addition to compensation, Medica offers a generous total rewards package that includes competitive medical, dental, vision, PTO, Holidays, paid volunteer time off, 401K contributions, caregiver services and many other benefits to support our employees. The compensation and benefits information is provided as of the date of this posting. Medica’s compensation and benefits are subject to change at any time, with or without notice, subject to applicable law. Eligibility to work in the US: Medica does not offer work visa sponsorship for this role. All candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States at the time of application. Employment is contingent on verification of identity and eligibility to work in the United States. We are an Equal Opportunity employer, where all qualified candidates receive consideration for employment indiscriminate of race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, citizenship, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or any other protected characteristic.