Sr. Director of IT Applications

The Senior Director, IT Applications is a senior technology leader responsible for the strategy, leadership, delivery, performance, and optimization of Community Behavioral Health’s (CBH) enterprise application portfolio. Reporting to the Chief Information Officer, this position oversees internally supported and vendor-supported applications that enable CBH’s clinical, operational, financial, and administrative functions, including the organization’s claims adjudication system and enterprise clinical dashboard.

A central accountability of this role is establishing and maturing CBH’s Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) capability, including the governance, processes, tools, environments, controls, and standards required for disciplined application development and delivery. The Senior Director will ensure SDLC practices are fully adopted and consistently utilized across internal teams and applicable vendors, while building the organizational structure, talent, accountability, and partnerships necessary to deliver secure, reliable, high-quality solutions with accuracy and predictability.

Salary: Starts at $129,500 and above, depending on experience. 

Key Responsibilities:

Organizational and Talent Leadership

• Build and lead a high-performing enterprise applications organization with the structure, capacity, and capabilities required to support CBH’s current and future needs.
• Recruit, onboard, develop, and retain high-quality technology talent, capable of effective application delivery within a mature SDLC.
• Establish clear roles, performance expectations, accountability, professional development, and succession plans.
• Cultivate a culture of ownership, collaboration, transparency, customer service, continuous improvement, and disciplined execution.

Enterprise Partnership and Communication

• Serve as a trusted technology partner to executive leaders, business stakeholders, and colleagues across CBH.
• Build strong partnerships across IT and with clinical, operational, financial, compliance, data and administrative leaders to translate business priorities into effective technology solutions.
• Communicate proactively regarding application performance, delivery commitments, SDLC progress, risks, significant incidents, resource needs, and key decisions.
• Translate complex technology issues into clear business terms and provide actionable recommendations, options, risks, and tradeoffs.

Application Strategy, Governance and SDLC Leadership

• Develop and execute an enterprise applications strategy and roadmap aligned with CBH’s organizational priorities and technology strategy.
• Establish and mature CBH’s enterprise SDLC framework, including governance, methodologies, processes, tools, environments, documentation, controls, and performance measures.
• Ensure SDLC practices are consistently applied across application development, configuration, integration, testing, release, deployment, maintenance, and major vendor-supported implementations.
• Establish a clear applications operating model with defined roles, decision rights, prioritization, standards, and accountability.
• Partner with the CIO and IT leadership team to prioritize investments, modernize the application portfolio, and ensure solutions support enterprise needs.

Enterprise Application Management and Delivery

• Provide end-to-end oversight of mission-critical applications throughout their lifecycle, including requirements, design, development/configuration, integration, testing, deployment, maintenance, enhancement, upgrades, and support.
• Provide executive oversight of CBH’s claims adjudication system, enterprise clinical information system, and other critical application platforms.
• Establish disciplined requirements, testing, quality assurance, change, release, and deployment practices that improve delivery speed, quality, predictability, traceability, and production readiness.
• Ensure appropriate development, test, staging, and production environments and supporting delivery infrastructure are established, governed, and effectively utilized.
• Maintain clear visibility into application roadmaps, priorities, backlogs, delivery commitments, risks, dependencies, performance, and technical debt; ensure critical issues are escalated and resolved with appropriate urgency.

Vendor Management

• Serve as the senior IT relationship owner for strategic application vendors and hold partners accountable for performance, service levels, delivery, issue resolution, and applicable CBH SDLC, security, testing, and change-management expectations.
• Establish effective vendor governance and partner with appropriate internal stakeholders on contracts, renewals, licensing, performance, risks, and technology value.

Risk, Security and Compliance

• Ensure enterprise applications and SDLC practices operate in accordance with CBH policies and applicable regulatory requirements.
• Partner with Information Security, Privacy, Compliance, and Legal to embed appropriate security, privacy, access, testing, change-management, documentation, and audit controls throughout the application lifecycle.
• Support audits, risk assessments, and remediation activities, and proactively address application risks including technical debt, vendor dependencies, unsupported technologies, integration challenges, and process/control gaps.

Position Requirements: 

Education

• Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field required.
•  Master’s degree or relevant advanced professional credentials preferred.

Experience

• Minimum of 10 years of progressively responsible information technology experience, including significant responsibility for enterprise applications, software development/application delivery, or software platforms, with at least 5 years in senior leadership.
• Demonstrated expertise establishing, maturing, governing, and driving adoption of SDLC processes, methodologies, tools, controls, environments, and delivery infrastructure.
• Demonstrated success building or maturing an enterprise applications or software delivery function and recruiting, developing, and retaining high-performing technology professionals.
• Significant experience overseeing mission-critical enterprise applications, including implementations, integrations, upgrades, modernization, production support, release management, and strategic software vendors.
• Healthcare technology experience, including claims processing, clinical systems, care management platforms, healthcare data, or related technologies strongly preferred.
• Experience within a Medicaid Managed Care Organization, health plan, behavioral health organization, healthcare delivery system, or similarly regulated environment strongly preferred.

Philadelphia Residency Requirement:

• The successful candidate must be a current Philadelphia resident or become a resident within six months of hire. 

U.S. Authorization Requirement: 

• CBH does not provide sponsorship for applicants requiring future work authorization. All candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States without requiring sponsorship now or in the future.

Equal Employment Opportunity: 

• We strive to promote and sustain a culture of diversity, inclusion and belonging every day. CBH is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in recruiting, hiring, promotion, or any other personnel action based on all qualified individuals. This is without regard to race, ethnicity, creed, color, religion, national origin, age, sex/gender, marital status, gender identity, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, protected veteran status, genetic information or any other characteristic protected individual genetic information, or non-disqualifying physical or mental handicap or disability in each aspect of the human resources function by applicable federal, state, or local law.

Requesting An Accommodation: 

• CBH is committed to providing equal employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities or religious observance, including reasonable accommodation when needed. If you are hired by CBH and require an accommodation to perform the essential functions of your role, you will be asked to participate in our accommodation process. Accommodations made to facilitate the recruiting process are not a guarantee of future or continued accommodation once hired. 
• If you would like to be considered for employment opportunities with CBH and have accommodation needs for a disability or religious observance, please send us an email at CBH.Recruitment@Phila.gov