INTRODUCTION TO EVERNORTH:
Evernorth Health Services India, established in Hyderabad in 2024, is an innovation hub for Evernorth Health Services, the pharmacy, care and benefits division of The Cigna Group. The innovation hub will support innovation-focused areas, such as generative AI, product development, process improvement, analytics, and software engineering across The Cigna Group and its businesses. Evernorth Health Services India builds on The Cigna Group’s existing presence in India.
About Evernorth Health Services:
Evernorth Health Services (Evernorth) is the pharmacy, care and benefits solution division of The Cigna Group - a Fortune 16 global health company with 75,000 employees, 186 million customers in more than 30 countries and jurisdictions around the world. Evernorth exists to make the prediction, prevention, and treatment of illness and disease more accessible to millions of people. We do this by creating and connecting premier health services offerings, such as benefits management, pharmacy, care solutions, insights and intelligence.
About Cigna:
The Cigna Group is a global health company committed to improving the health and vitality of individuals and communities around the world and includes products and services marketed under its Cigna Healthcare and Evernorth Health Services subsidiaries. Cigna Healthcare is the health benefits provider of The Cigna Group, serving customers and clients through its U.S. Employer, U.S. Government, and International Health business. Evernorth Health Services is the pharmacy, care and benefits solution division of The Cigna Group.
Operations Reliability Engineering / Associate Director
Position Overview
Are you looking for an opportunity to lead an engineering team in building modern, scalable, and high-quality solutions across diverse platforms and technologies? Do you want to be part of a business that plays a crucial role in Cigna’s and Evernorth’s strategic vision? If so, this role is for you!
The Evernorth℠Technology strategy is fully aligned with our business strategy, resulting in an opportunity for you to influence in various directions – this includes technology\business direction but also recruiting and mentoring employees and influencing selection of and relationships with vendor resources to ultimately build and contribute within a world class Delivery Vertical.
The Associate Director, Operations Reliability Engineering will lead the Reliability Engineering capability for Core Technology at the Hyderabad Innovation Hub. This leader will build and develop a high-performing organization of 100–130 professionals, establish an enterprise-scale quality strategy, and partner with U.S.-based engineering and business leaders to deliver reliable, secure, and modern technology capabilities. The role combines strategic leadership, people development, engineering governance, and hands-on accountability for measurable quality outcomes.This role will report to the Core Tech HIH – Director (Technical Service Engineering).
Responsibilities
· Provide leadership, vision, and strategic direction for Quality Engineering, establishing an enterprise automation strategy that improves test coverage, release confidence, engineering productivity, and speed to market across the portfolio
· Establish and govern enterprise testing standards, operating procedures, quality gates, and KPI frameworks; use portfolio-level insights to identify risk, drive corrective action, and communicate quality performance to senior stakeholders.
· Provide horizontal Quality Engineering leadership across multiple programs, partnering with internal stakeholders and strategic vendors to align priorities, manage dependencies, standardize delivery practices, and achieve consistent quality outcomes.
· Define and execute a multi-year Quality Engineering strategy and roadmap aligned with Core Technology priorities, business outcomes, modernization objectives, and enterprise risk expectations.
· Build trusted partnerships with Core Technology product, engineering, architecture, operations, and business leaders to translate portfolio priorities, application risks, and regulatory requirements into fit-for-purpose quality strategies and investment decisions.
· Lead modernization of the Quality Engineering ecosystem through scalable automation frameworks, API and service-level testing, cloud-enabled test environments, service virtualization, test data management, and responsible adoption of AI-assisted testing capabilities.
· Embed continuous quality within Agile and DevOps delivery by integrating automated functional and non-functional testing into CI/CD pipelines, establishing risk-based quality gates, enabling shift-left and shift-right practices, and accelerating feedback to improve release readiness.
· Partner with Engineering, DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering, Security, and Operations leaders to define and validate performance, availability, resilience, security, observability, and capacity requirements, using production insights to drive preventive quality improvements.
· Drive measurable improvements in testing productivity, cost effectiveness, release confidence, and speed to market by expanding risk-based automation, scaling AI-enabled quality practices, reducing manual regression effort, optimizing tools and vendors, and tracking portfolio-level value realization.
Qualifications
Required Skills:
· Strong leadership, communication, and negotiation skills, with the ability to influence across all levels of the organization.
· Experience managing cross-functional QA teams in an Agile environment.
· Expertise in quality engineering strategy, automation strategy and AI-assisted testing methodologies
· Proven ability to drive large-scale QA and testing initiatives for both UI and backend systems.
· Experience in Healthcare IT with an understanding of industry terminology, processes, and compliance.
· Experience building automation-first engineering cultures and coaching leaders and teams in reusable frameworks, testability, continuous testing, AI-assisted practices, DevOps integration, and measurable quality outcomes.
· Experience evaluating, governing, and scaling AI-enabled Quality Engineering use cases, with demonstrated accountability for security, privacy, human oversight, adoption, productivity gains, and value realization.
· Experience influencing senior product, engineering, architecture, DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering, security, operations, and vendor stakeholders across a global, matrixed organization
Required Experience & Education:
• 18+ years of experience in SDLC methodologies.
• 10+ years of management experience, leading and developing technical teams.
• Experience in vendor management within an onshore/offshore model.
• Expertise in architecture, design, and development of large-scale enterprise testing solutions.
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent work experience).
• Experience building automation strategy for an organization ground up.
Desired Experience:
• Experience defining and governing end-to-end testing lifecycles, quality operating models, and risk-based test strategies across multiple products, platforms, or enterprise portfolios.
• Experience establishing Quality Engineering strategies for cloud-native and distributed systems, preferably on AWS, including resilience, scalability, security, performance, observability, and failure-recovery validation.
• Experience with healthcare claims adjudication and claims lifecycle processes, including quality risks associated with high-volume, highly regulated transaction systems, data privacy, security controls, and audit requirements.
Equal Opportunity Statement
Evernorth is an Equal Opportunity Employer actively encouraging and supporting organization-wide involvement of staff in diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts to educate, inform and advance both internal practices and external work with diverse client populations.
About Evernorth Health Services
Evernorth Health Services, a division of The Cigna Group, creates pharmacy, care and benefit solutions to improve health and increase vitality. We relentlessly innovate to make the prediction, prevention and treatment of illness and disease more accessible to millions of people. Join us in driving growth and improving lives.
Skills Required
- Strong leadership, communication, and negotiation skills with the ability to influence across all organizational levels
- Experience managing cross-functional QA teams in an Agile environment
- Expertise in quality engineering strategy, automation strategy, and AI-assisted testing methodologies
- Experience driving large-scale QA and testing initiatives for UI and backend systems
- Experience in Healthcare IT, including industry terminology, processes, and compliance
- Experience building automation-first engineering cultures and coaching teams in reusable frameworks, testability, continuous testing, AI-assisted practices, DevOps integration, and measurable quality outcomes
- Experience evaluating, governing, and scaling AI-enabled Quality Engineering use cases with accountability for security, privacy, human oversight, adoption, productivity gains, and value realization
- Experience influencing senior product, engineering, architecture, DevOps, SRE, security, operations, and vendor stakeholders in a global matrixed organization
- 18 or more years of experience in SDLC methodologies
- 10 or more years of management experience leading and developing technical teams
- Experience managing vendors in an onshore/offshore model
- Expertise in architecture, design, and development of large-scale enterprise testing solutions
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or a related field, or equivalent work experience
- Experience building an automation strategy from the ground up
- Experience defining and governing end-to-end testing lifecycles, quality operating models, and risk-based test strategies across multiple products, platforms, or enterprise portfolios
- Experience establishing Quality Engineering strategies for cloud-native and distributed systems, preferably on AWS
- Experience with healthcare claims adjudication and claims lifecycle processes, including privacy, security controls, and audit requirements
Cigna Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Cigna and has not been reviewed or approved by Cigna.
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Strong & Reliable Incentives — Strong bonus outcomes are frequently highlighted, with annual bonuses described as really good alongside above-average salary levels. Stock or long-term incentive elements are also noted as part of the overall package in some roles.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Time-off benefits are portrayed as a meaningful part of total rewards, including generous PTO and flexibility that can enhance the perceived value of compensation. Flexible work-from-home arrangements are repeatedly linked with satisfaction about the overall package.
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Healthcare Strength — Health coverage is described as broad in design, with preventive care often covered at no charge in-network and options like virtual care and wellness incentives. A large provider network and strong digital tools are positioned as practical advantages when using benefits.
Cigna Insights
What We Do
At Cigna, we're more than a health insurance company. We are your partner in total health and wellness. And we’re here for you 24/7 – caring for your body and mind. As a global health service company, Cigna's mission is to improve the health, well-being, and peace of mind of those we serve by making health care simple, affordable, and predictable. Our values are the core of our culture. Our values guide how all 74,000 of us around the world work together, serve our customers, patients, clients, communities, and deliver on our mission.
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