Head of Category Management

Manager-Payer MDM

Job Description Summary

The Manager – Payer MDM will lead the strategy, governance, and operational execution of the Payer Master Data Management (MDM) platform. This role partners closely with Product Owners, Payer Data SMEs, and cross‑functional stakeholders to ensure accurate, reliable, and high‑quality mastering of payer, plan, PBM, and commercial healthcare datasets. The manager will guide teams, shape standards, oversee processes, and drive continuous improvement across data quality, stewardship, and platform performance.

Job Description

Key Responsibilities:  

• Own and drive the Payer MDM roadmap in partnership with Product Owners and business stakeholders, aligning priorities, timelines, and measurable outcomes. 

• Lead data governance for payer/plan/PBM domains, including definition and adoption of standards, policies, metadata, controls, and stewardship KPIs. 

• Provide people leadership to analysts/stewards (coaching, workload planning, quality reviews, and capability building) and foster a culture of accountability and continuous improvement. 

• Oversee curation and exception-handling operations, ensuring SLAs, escalations, auditability, and consistent stewardship practices across teams. 

• Own the MDM data stewardship operating model (roles/responsibilities, workflows, controls, and escalation paths) and ensure alignment across regions and functions. 

• Define, monitor, and improve data quality metrics (completeness, accuracy, timeliness, duplication) using dashboards, thresholds, root-cause analysis, and remediation plans. 

• Lead configuration and continuous improvement of Reltio (data model, match/merge, survivorship, hierarchies, validation, workflows) and translate business requirements into scalable MDM solutions. 

• Drive cross-functional alignment on payer business rules, hierarchy management, and golden record definitions; ensure consistent implementation across source systems and downstream products. 

• Manage stakeholder engagement and vendor/partner relationships to resolve data discrepancies, drive adoption, and maintain adherence to quality and compliance expectations. 

• Establish and strengthen monitoring/alerting and operational controls (DQ checks, reconciliations, audit trails) to ensure trusted mastered data delivery. 

• Identify operational bottlenecks and implement process improvements and automation (including GenAI/agentic patterns where appropriate) to increase efficiency and reduce cycle time. 

• Oversee data profiling and analysis (e.g., SQL/Snowflake) to support onboarding of new sources, control duplicate creation, and drive root-cause remediation with upstream owners. 

• Govern payer/plan/PBM attribute definitions and reference data, and ensure hierarchy integrity and transformations meet business and analytics needs. 

• Ensure reliable service to downstream consumers by managing release readiness, change communication, documentation, and production support for mastered payer data products. 

Essential Requirements:  

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or related field. 

• 7–10 years of experience in Master Data Management and/or data governance, with demonstrated ownership of MDM delivery and operational outcomes (data modeling, match/merge, survivorship, hierarchies, stewardship workflows). 

• Strong hands-on data analysis and profiling skills using SQL (preferably on Snowflake) to assess source readiness, define controls, troubleshoot issues, and drive root-cause remediation. 

• Strong domain knowledge of US payer/plan/PBM concepts and common healthcare data constructs; ability to translate domain needs into golden record definitions and business rules. 

• Experience applying automation and AI/GenAI capabilities to data operations (e.g., stewardship support, issue triage, monitoring, matching/curation acceleration) with strong judgment on risk, controls, and compliance. 

• Working knowledge of data engineering patterns (ELT/ETL) and toolsets (e.g., Snowflake, Python, orchestration such as Airflow/ADF) to partner effectively with engineering and influence design decisions. 

• Proven ability to lead through ambiguity with strong problem-solving, prioritization, and an automation-first mindset; experience establishing SLAs, controls, and operational metrics. 

• People leadership experience (direct or matrix), including coaching, performance feedback, and delivery management across multi-disciplinary teams. 

• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, including the ability to influence decisions, present insights to senior audiences, and drive cross-functional alignment. 

• Experience managing external vendors/partners and driving change management for new data standards, processes, and platform enhancements. 

• Strong program/project management skills to manage multiple workstreams, dependencies, and deadlines while maintaining delivery quality. 

Skills Desired

Cross-Functional Collaboration, Data ETL, Data Governance, Data Monitoring, Data Quality, Data Quality Management, ETL (Informatica), Extract Transform Load (ETL), healthcare, healthcare payor, Informatica MDM, Master Data Management, Master Data Management (MDM), mdm, Payer Strategy, pharma, python, Python (Programming Language), reltio, sql, Stakeholder Engagement, Stakeholder Management, Structured Query Language (SQL)

Experience Level

Senior Level