Specialist, Application Developer II

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey empowers our members to achieve their best health.  For over 90 years, we have been New Jersey’s health solutions leader driving innovations that improve health care quality, affordability, and member experience.  Our members are our neighbors, our friends, and our families.  It is this understanding that drives us to better serve and care for the 3.5 million people who place their trust in us. We pride ourselves on our best-in-class employees and strive to maintain an innovative and inclusive environment that allows them to thrive. When our employees bring their best and succeed, the Company succeeds. 

About the Role

What You'll Do

• Review highly complex business requirement documents/user stories and translate into technical specifications/user stories while following Horizon’s development methodology standards. 

• Work from technical specifications to develop, modify and maintain highly complex software products, including unit and system testing.  The developed products will have dependencies on other internal and external applications and will require cross functional collaboration.

• Follows, enforces, and mentors team on Horizon’s standardized code development, deployment, security protocols/standards and SDLC practices (e.g. Agile, Waterfall, Kanban).

• Acts as a leader within the team and drives DevOps best practices.  Track metrics with quarterly reviews to pulse the efficiency of the development team.  May run innovation projects such as hack-a-thons.

• Analyze and troubleshoot complex cross functional problems and make recommendations for remediation. 

• Lead production support as required, including but not limited to performing production support service requests and routine maintenance and support activities. 

• Provide status updates to management on deliverables and projects.

• Leads design, code and infrastructure reviews to ensure high quality outcomes. Leads architecture discussions to ensure alignment to Horizon standards/patterns.

• Mentors junior staff. Assigns work and directs staff in the production of work product while promoting teamwork both internal and external to the organization.

• Leads and manages interactions with external vendors to drive solutions and monitor deliverables. Directly interacts with internal customers and manages stakeholder expectations. 

• Formulates and manages system scope, objectives and cost for assigned projects .

• Perform production support or deployment/checkout for applications during off-hours as needed.

What You Bring

Education/Experience:

• High School Diploma/GED required

• Bachelor’s degree required or 12 years of relevant experience in lieu of degree

• 8+ years of relevant work experience preferred

• Experience with Power BI highly preferred

• Experience with AWS, Azure or GCP highly preferred

• Consulting skills highly preferred

• Experience with data warehouse (Snowflake, DataBricks, RedShift).

Additional Licensing, Certifications, Registrations:

• Professional certification in area of expertise a plus

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• Requires expert knowledge of software development life cycle methodologies (e.g. Agile, Waterfall, Kanban) 

• Experience with an analytics tool (Power Bi, Tableau, etc.)

• Requires advanced knowledge of object-oriented languages   

• Requires advanced knowledge of markup languages 

• Requires knowledge of relational database management systems 

• Demonstrates understanding of core business functions 

• Demonstrates ability to apply structure to a loosely defined problem 

• Requires strong interpersonal skills including the ability to collaborate with teams and break down complex technical information into simple language for non-technical personnel and also communicate technical information to security, architects and others.  

• Requires expert proficiency in application programming and proficiency in SQL 

• Requires excellent oral and written communication skills 

• Requires fundamental critical thinking and problem-solving skill with attention to detail

• Requires ability to quickly adapt and work in a fast-paced environment.

• Requires excellent organizational and time management skills and ability to work independently without supervision while leading others 

• Requires ability to handle multiple tasks while also supporting others. 

• Requires experience with MS Office tools including Visio.

• Prefers experience with Jira/Confluence 

• Requires ability to lead globally distributed team 

Why Horizon?

At Horizon, you’ll do meaningful work that directly improves lives—while being supported by a mission‑driven organization that values expertise, collaboration, and growth.  We believe that when our people thrive, our communities do too.  If you are passionate about making an impact, we’d love to hear from you!

Salary Range:

​This compensation range is specific to the job level and takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions, including but not limited to: education, experience, licensure, certifications, geographic location, and internal equity.  This range has been created in good faith based on information known to Horizon at the time of posting.  Compensation decisions are dependent on the circumstances of each case. Horizon also provides a comprehensive compensation and benefits package which includes:

• Comprehensive health benefits (Medical/Dental/Vision)

• Retirement Plans

• Generous PTO

• Incentive Plans

• Wellness Programs

• Paid Volunteer Time Off

• Tuition Reimbursement

Disclaimer:

Horizon BCBSNJ employees must live in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut or Delaware. This job summary has been designed to indicate the general nature and level of work performed by colleagues within this classification. It is not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all duties, responsibilities, and qualifications required of colleagues assigned to this job.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, protected veteran status or status as an individual with a disability and any other protected class as required by federal, state or local law.  Horizon will consider reasonable accommodation requests as part of the recruiting and hiring process.