Vice President, Product Development

Job Description The Vice President, Product Development will report to the Vice President, Customer and Product Strategy. The Vice President, Product Development is a senior executive responsible for defining, designing, and delivering the health plan’s next generation of products, capabilities, and services across all markets. This role leads innovation and product modernization to ensure offerings remain competitive, compliant, operationally sound, and financially sustainable.

The VP oversees a broad portfolio that includes product and solution design, benefit configuration and intent, program management, solution architecture, user experience, and vendor/partner management. This leader works cross-functionally with Markets, Actuarial, Network/Provider Strategy, Clinical, Finance, Digital/Technology, and Compliance to ensure products meet member needs while supporting enterprise strategy.

Responsibilities Your Work In this role, you will:

• Product Strategy & Innovation

• Lead enterprise product strategy and development for new health plan offerings, capabilities, and benefits across all lines of business.

• Drive ideation and innovation cycles that support affordability, quality, access, and member experience goals.

• Manage multiple concurrent product feasibility assessments, ensuring alignment with actuarial soundness, regulatory requirements, operational capacity, and market opportunity.

• Manage multi-million dollar budget for assigned initiatives.

• Champion the development of differentiated capabilities and service models that position the health plan as a market leader.

• Institute new revenue and monetization opportunities aligned with enterprise growth strategies.

• Direct and oversee regular competitive intelligence and implications around new product capabilities, opportunities and enhancements.

• Product Design, Solutioning & Development

• Lead end-to-end product solution design, ensuring benefit design, configuration, and operational workflows comply with federal and state regulations (CMS, DMHC, DOI, DHCS). Manage technical teams, consultants and contractors for delivery in partnership with IT.

• Develop and deliver product requirements and multi-year development roadmap in partnership with functional and technical stakeholders.

• Represent yearly strategic funding and prioritization for the Product roadmap to the Board (as needed).

• Partner with VP Cost of Healthcare, VP of Pricing, VP of Partner Services, VP of Line of Business Strategy, and VP of Finance, and all of the Line of Business General Managers on pricing assumptions, value models, benefit cost impacts and market positioning and member/customer experience.

• Collaborate closely with VP Digital and Chief Technology Officer to define technology requirements, system impacts, and integration needs.

• Product Operations, Configuration & Implementation

• Lead benefit interpretation and policy, including benefit configuration, and downstream operational readiness.

• Ensure timely, accurate and on budget off-cycle benefit updates, annual benefit refreshes, rate filings, and new product launches.

• Establish clear governance and quality assurance mechanisms to reduce configuration errors, improve automation throughput, reduce market cycle times and ensure operational compliance.

• Program Management & Delivery

• Oversee the Products Program Management Office (PMO) responsible for complex, cross-functional implementation efforts (e.g., new product launches, regulatory-driven benefit changes, system modernization).

• Lead programs to meet timelines, budget, risk mitigation plans, and enterprise standards.

• Drive alignment across Markets, Sales, Operations, IT, Clinical, and Network to ensure successful end-to-end product delivery and superior member experience.

• Solution Architecture & User Experience

• Lead product solution architecture to ensure products are scalable, technically feasible, cost-effective, and operationally sound.

• Champion user experience (member, employer group, broker, and provider) in product design, partnering with UX teams to embed human-centered design principles.

• Vendor & Partner Management

• Manage evaluation and oversight of strategic product vendors and digital health Conduct ad hoc assessments to determine vendor-value contribution, compliance, cost-effectiveness, and integration feasibility.

• Advance strategic partnerships that strengthen product differentiation and accelerate capability development.

• Collaborate and partner with VP, Partner Services, on shared governance and key success metrics.

• People Leadership

• Lead an organization of approximately 50 employees across product design, operations, PMO, architecture, UX, and vendor management, including 5Directors.

• Build a culture grounded in accountability, collaboration, innovation, and the health plan’s leadership behaviors (Human, Honest, Courageous).

• Develop talent, strengthen organizational capability, and create clear succession pathways within the Product organization.

Qualifications Your Knowledge and Experience

• 15 years of prior relevant experience, including 8 years of management experience with a minimum of 5 years in health plan product (or related) experience. Some high tech experience preferred.
• Deep understanding of health plan operations, regulatory requirements (CMS, DMHC/DOI, DHCS), and core admin platforms (e.g., Facets).
• Demonstrated success in leading product innovation and complex cross-functional delivery.
• Experience managing large, multidisciplinary teams and multimillion-dollar portfolios.
• Strong strategic thinking, system-level problem solving, and executive communication skills. Success Measures (Examples)
• On-time and error-free implementation of annual and off-cycle product updates.
• Launch of new capabilities and services that drive membership growth, retention, and improved STARS/QRS/HEDIS outcomes.
• Reduced operational defects and improved benefit accuracy and claims auto-adjudication rates.
• Increased speed-to-market for new offerings.

MBA required.

About The Team About Blue Shield of California As of January 2025, Blue Shield of California became a subsidiary of Ascendiun. Ascendiun is a nonprofit corporate entity that is the parent to a family of organizations including Blue Shield of California and its subsidiary, Blue Shield of California Promise Health Plan; Altais, a clinical services company; and Stellarus, a company designed to scale healthcare solutions. Together, these organizations are referred to as the Ascendiun Family of Companies.

At Blue Shield of California, our mission is to create a healthcare system worthy of our family and friends and sustainably affordable. We are transforming health care in a way that genuinely serves our nonprofit mission by lowering costs, improving quality, and enhancing the member and physician experience.

To achieve our mission, we foster an environment where all employees can thrive and contribute fully to address the needs of the various communities we serve. We are committed to creating and maintaining a supportive workplace that upholds our values and advances our goals.

Blue Shield is a U.S. News Best Company to work for, a Deloitte U.S. Best Managed Company and a Top 100 Inspiring Workplace. We were recognized by Fair360 as a Top Regional Company, and one of the 50 most community-minded companies in the United States by Points of Light. Here at Blue Shield, we strive to make a positive change across our industry and communities — join us!

Our Values:

• Honest. We hold ourselves to the highest ethical and integrity standards. We build trust by doing what we say we’re going to do and by acknowledging and correcting where we fall short.
• Human. We strive to listen and communicate effectively, showing empathy by understanding others’ perspectives.
• Courageous. We stand up for what we believe in and are committed to the hard work necessary to achieve our ambitious goals.

Our Workplace Model We believe in fostering a workplace environment that balances purposeful in-person collaboration with flexibility – providing clear expectations while respecting the diverse needs of our workforce. Our workplace model is designed around intentional in-person interaction, collaboration, connection, creativity and flexibility:

• For most teams, this means coming into the office two days per week.
• Employees living more than 50 miles from an office location, out of state employees, and employees in certain member-facing roles should work with their manager to determine in-office time based on business need.
• For employees with medical conditions that may impact their ability to work in-office, we are committed to engaging in an interactive process and providing reasonable accommodations to ensure their work environment is conducive to their success and well-being.

The Company reserves the right to require more presence in the office based on business needs, and requirements are subject to change with periodic reviews.

Physical Requirements: Office Environment – roles involving part to full time schedule in Office Environment. Based in our physical offices and work from home office/deskwork – Activity level: Sedentary, frequency most of work day.

Please click here for further physical requirement detail.

Equal Employment Opportunity:External hires must pass a background check/drug screen. Qualified applicants with arrest records and/or conviction records will be considered for employment in a manner consistent with Federal, State and local laws, including but not limited to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regards to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, protected veteran status or disability status and any other classification protected by Federal, State and local laws.