Application Development Associate Director - HIH - Evernorth

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.

Job Position:

The Production Support Associate Director is responsible for providing unified leadership and operational governance across Tier 1 and Tier 2 applications, ensuring stability, resilience, and continuous improvement across a highly interdependent digital ecosystem.

As the accountable leader, this role drives standardization, ownership, and faster decision‑making, coordinates Hyderabad‑based FTEs and contractors, leads high‑severity incident management, and advances AI‑ and automation‑led L2 operations to reduce manual effort and improve operational efficiency at scale.

Key Responsibilities

Operational Leadership & Governance

• Define and execute the offshore production support strategy and target operating model across all UDDS digital platforms, aligned with enterprise technology and business priorities.
• Own the governance framework, decision rights, service standards, risk controls, and executive review cadence for the production support portfolio.
• Set portfolio-level objectives and performance measures for availability, resilience, customer experience, regulatory compliance, and SLA attainment.
• Lead cross-platform prioritization and investment decisions, balancing operational risk, business impact, capacity, and modernization needs.
• Represent offshore production support in senior leadership forums and provide transparent accountability for service health, material risks, and transformation outcomes.

Incident & Problem Management

• Provide executive oversight and decision authority for L1.5/2/3 incidents, ensuring timely business impact assessment, escalation, communications, and recovery.
• Establish an integrated major incident, problem, and crisis management framework across application, infrastructure, security, vendor, and business teams.
• Hold platform and support leaders accountable for high-quality RCA, permanent corrective actions, control effectiveness, and closure of systemic issues.
• Sponsor portfolio-level reliability reviews to identify concentration risks, recurring failure patterns, and strategic remediation priorities.
• Ensure operational risks and critical dependencies are visible to senior leaders with clear ownership, mitigation plans, and decision timelines.

Team & Delivery Management

• Build and lead a multi-platform production support organization comprising Hyderabad-based FTEs, contractors, and strategic partners under a unified operating model.
• Define the organizational structure, leadership roles, workforce strategy, and sourcing mix required to deliver resilient 24×7 support at scale.
• Develop a strong leadership bench through succession planning, coaching, capability frameworks, and targeted development of critical technical and operational skills.
• Set clear outcome-based accountabilities for leaders and teams, reinforcing a culture of ownership, collaboration, inclusion, and continuous improvement.
• Own workforce capacity, financial stewardship, vendor performance, and support readiness for business-critical Tier 1 and Tier 2 applications.

AI, Automation & Continuous Improvement

• Set the AI, automation, observability, and operational modernization strategy for L2 production support, with a multi-year roadmap and measurable value targets.
• Sponsor and scale priority use cases such as intelligent triage, event correlation, predictive detection, automated remediation, and self-healing capabilities.
• Partner with engineering, SRE, architecture, data, cybersecurity, and platform leaders to embed reliability-by-design and operational readiness into the delivery lifecycle.
• Establish value-realization measures covering incident prevention, MTTR, automation adoption, productivity, service quality, and cost efficiency.
• Govern responsible AI adoption, controls, risk management, and sustainable operating practices across the support organization.

Stakeholder & Cross‑Functional Collaboration

• Serve as the senior offshore partner and escalation point for onshore technology and business leaders, product teams, SRE, infrastructure, cybersecurity, and strategic vendors.
• Translate business priorities and customer impact into portfolio strategy, operational commitments, investment proposals, and transformation roadmaps.
• Lead executive service reviews with clear insights on performance, risk, capacity, financials, transformation progress, and decisions required.
• Influence cross-functional leaders to resolve systemic dependencies, align priorities, and accelerate outcomes across business-critical digital journeys.
• Own strategic vendor and partner governance, including commercial performance, service quality, accountability, and continuous value improvement.

Required Qualifications

• 18+ years of experience in Application Production Support / IT Operations, with at least 10 years in a leadership role.
• Strong experience supporting large‑scale digital platforms (web, mobile, APIs) in a 24×7 model.
• Proven expertise in Major Incident Management, cross‑tower escalation, and stakeholder communications.
• Experience managing offshore teams, including FTEs and contractors, at scale.
• Hands‑on understanding of ITIL, SRE, and operational excellence practices.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting healthcare or regulated digital platforms.
• Exposure to AI‑driven operations, automation, and L2/L3 efficiency initiatives.
• Familiarity with observability and support tools (e.g., ServiceNow, monitoring and APM platforms).
• Strong executive communication and leadership presence during high‑pressure situations.

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