Innovation Project Manager - 138871

The Health Innovation Program Manager independently leads and directs multiple projects and/or programs of medium to large size and complexity while also owning key aspects of product strategy and delivery within the Jacobs Center for Health Innovation (JCHI) department. This role blends clinical practice experience with strong project execution discipline, iterative design integration, and product management capabilities, including defining vision, prioritizing roadmaps, and ensuring solutions deliver measurable business and user value.

The Joan and Irwin Jacobs Center for Health Innovation (JCHI) at UC San Diego Health develops technology solutions that expand what's possible for healthcare. We facilitate the rapid, creative development, testing and implementation of new strategies to reimagine health care delivery. We believe the best way to make big improvements to patient health and health care delivery is to experiment quickly at low cost, only scaling once we find high impact solutions. The Center provides an exciting and fast-paced opportunity for motivated, entrepreneurial individuals to effect systemic change at UC San Diego Health and across the healthcare industry.

The incumbent brings experience in the clinical setting, Epic knowledge, and hospital infrastructure understanding to plan and manage cross functional and cross organizational initiatives with high risk/high impact financial, operational, or legal implications. The role is responsible for bringing new, complex technologies to the inpatient and outpatient clinical space, and therefore anticipates risks and proactively plans actions to avoid or mitigate impacts to schedules, budgets, deliverables, quality, and staffing. The Health Innovation Program Manager provides leadership and sound decision making in environments with competing priorities and senior level stakeholders.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

Project & Program Leadership

• Manage all aspects of the project and program life cycle (PLC), from initiation through delivery and close out.
• Lead multiple concurrent projects and/or programs, including coordination of dependencies, resources, and timelines.
• Ensure appropriate project governance is established and followed (e.g., steering committees, change control, baseline management).
• Execute projects and product initiatives in accordance with PMO methodologies, approved plans, and stakeholder expectations.
• Monitor progress, manage risks and issues, and communicate status, tradeoffs, and recommendations to stakeholders and senior leadership.
• Develop and maintain detailed project schedules using PMIS tools (e.g., MS Project, ServiceNow), including WBS, task dependencies, durations, resource assignments, and critical path.

Product Management & Strategy

• Partner with business, clinical, operational, and technical stakeholders to define product vision, objectives, and success metrics.
• Translate business and user needs into clear product requirements, epics, and user stories.
• Own and maintain product roadmaps, balancing strategic initiatives, technical debt, regulatory requirements, and operational needs.
• Prioritize features and enhancements using data, stakeholder input, and value based frameworks.
• Serve as the voice of the customer and end user throughout the product and project lifecycle.

Stakeholder & Change Management

• Build strong relationships with executive sponsors, business owners, and cross functional partners.
• Facilitate decision making where competing interests and priorities exist.
• Support organizational change management by ensuring readiness, communication, and adoption of delivered solutions.

• Nine (9) years of related experience, education/training, OR a Bachelor's degree in related area plus five (5) years of related experience/training. Relevant experience in project management, product management, or a hybrid role.

• Requires basic knowledge of project management principles, theories, and concepts.

• Requires ability to assess campus, medical center or Office of the President needs for information technology products and design services to meet those needs.

• Working knowledge of technology-related initiatives and an understanding of impact to the organization of such initiatives.

• Demonstrated capacity to anticipate obstacles and plan for contingencies.

• Demonstrated attention to detail. Demonstrated ability to determine relevance and prioritize tasks.

• Demonstrated effective writing skills.

• Demonstrated competency in selecting and implementing project management methods and techniques.

• Broad knowledge of technology-related initiatives and an understanding of impact to the organization of such initiatives.

• Proven leadership ability. Effective problem solving skills. Demonstrated ability to put forth persuasive arguments.

• Effective skill at tracking effort and project progress. Demonstrated highly advanced organization and project management skills. Demonstrated strong conceptual and planning skills to analyze projects of broad and diverse scope. Understands the cost impact of projects, project tracking tools and metrics.

• Demonstrated ability to effectively communicate with all levels of an organization.

• Experience leading a team of technology professionals.

• Advanced knowledge of all aspects of computing and communications including hardware infrastructure, networking, software, operations and disaster recovery.

• Demonstrated ability to integrate critical information across disciplines. Understands how projects relate to other business strategies and initiatives.

• Three (3) or more years of Healthcare (Epic) and/or Facilities/Infrastructure and/or practice management experience.

• Experience using project management and delivery tools (e.g., Microsoft Project Pro/Server, ServiceNow, Clarity, Primavera, Jira, Confluence).

• Epic/EHR Project implementation experience.

• Applied knowledge of project management best practices and frameworks (e.g., PMI Body of Knowledge, SDLC, Agile/Scrum).

• Proven success managing technical projects in the inpatient setting and contributing to product delivery.

• PMP or PgMP (Project Management Institute) certification.

• Product management experience, certification, or formal training.

• Experience working in Agile or hybrid Agile/Waterfall environments.

• Clinical practice management experience.

• Must be able to work various hours and locations based on business needs.

• Employment is subject to a criminal background check and pre-employment physical.