Sr. Technical Program Manager

Our healthcare system is the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the U.S. Every year, over 50 million Americans suffer adverse financial consequences as a result of seeking care, from lower credit scores to garnished wages. The challenge is only getting worse, as high deductible health plans are the fastest growing plan design in the U.S.

Cedar’s mission is to leverage data science, smart product design and personalization to make healthcare more affordable and accessible. Today, healthcare providers still engage with its consumers in a “one-size-fits-all” approach; and Cedar is excited to leverage consumer best practices to deliver a superior experience.

Cedar is seeking a Senior Technical Program Manager to join the Makers Strategy & Operations team. This role is not aligned to a single product line or pillar, rather it is deployed against the most technically complex programs across the R&D organization. The efforts that span multiple teams, carry meaningful architectural risk, and lack clear end-to-end ownership at the outset.

The types of programs this person will take on are both architectural and product forward. Some will be multi-quarter platform, infrastructure, and data programs that touch how our systems are structured and how our products are built on top of them. Others will be product and feature programs, when they are demanding enough to warrant dedicated program leadership. In both cases, the programs carry real technical risk and dependencies that reach across the engineering organization. Cedar makes these investments to unlock the next generation of our product portfolio, to reduce the maintenance burden that accumulates in mature systems, and to build the foundations that make future products faster and cheaper to deliver. Work at this altitude is consequential to the trajectory of the business, and it carries visibility to match. The progress you make will be reviewed by executive leadership, and the outcomes will shape what Cedar is able to build for years afterward.

A defining characteristic of these programs is that they are under-defined when they begin. Requirements are incomplete, dependencies are undocumented, and the sequencing has not been worked out. The person in this role is expected to resolve that ambiguity, establish what is actually being built, in what order, with what tradeoffs, against what definition of done, and to remain accountable for delivery through to completion.

This is a senior individual contributor role with substantial exposure to engineering, product, and executive leadership. Success is measured by whether the hardest programs at Cedar land as intended. And, when they don't, by whether you saw it first. Stopping a program early because the underlying assumption turned out to be wrong, or catching a dependency in month two that would have surfaced in month six, is a good outcome. Delivering on time matters. So does the truth arriving early enough to act on.

Core Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end delivery of the most complex technical programs across R&D: scope, sequencing, dependencies, risk, and the decision log
• Break large architectural initiatives into sequenced milestones with explicit entry and exit criteria, then hold teams to them across planning cycles
• Drive technical decisions to closure: surface the tradeoffs, force the choice, document what was decided and why it was decided that way
• Manage dependencies across engineering teams and with Security, Infrastructure, Data, and client-facing functions
• Provide program leadership where there is no dedicated PM, including writing the requirements when the requirements don't exist yet
• Improve delivery predictability across the org: instrument delivery metrics, track technical debt, diagnose why programs slip, and fix the cause rather than the symptom
• Give executives an unvarnished read on program state: what's true, what's at risk, and what decision is needed from them

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years in technical program management, with the majority of that time on platform, infrastructure, or data programs rather than feature delivery
• Track record leading multi-team programs with genuine technical complexity: migrations, re-architectures, data platform builds, system consolidations
• Ability to read a design doc, hold your own in an architecture review, and spot risk the engineers haven't flagged yet
• Comfort operating as the only non-engineer in the room, and being the person accountable when the program is off track
• Experience with programs where the problem is ambiguous and the first deliverable is a clear definition of what's actually being built
• Working fluency in modern cloud and data architecture: warehouses, pipelines, service boundaries: enough to reason about tradeoffs independently
• Strong technical writing: decision docs, program narratives, executive updates that don't require a translation layer
• Experience using delivery metrics (DORA or equivalent) to change team behavior, not just to report status

Preferred Qualifications

• Prior hands-on engineering experience, or a CS or related technical degree
• SQL proficiency and the habit of pulling your own data
• Experience in healthcare or another regulated domain where compliance requirements shape technical architecture
• Experience with AI or ML platform programs
• Background in high-growth environments where the process doesn't exist until you build it

Compensation Range and Benefits

• Salary Range: $161,500 - $190,000
• This role is equity eligible
• This role offers a competitive benefits and wellness package
• New York City preferred. Remote eligible.

*Subject to location, experience, and education

#LI-REMOTE #JM-LinkedIn

What do we offer to the ideal candidate?

• A chance to improve the U.S. healthcare system at a high-growth company! Our leading healthcare financial platform is scaling rapidly, helping millions of patients per year
• Unless stated otherwise, most roles have flexibility to work from home or in the office, depending on what works best for you
• For exempt employees: Unlimited PTO for vacation, sick and mental health days–we encourage everyone to take at least 20 days of vacation per year to ensure dedicated time to spend with loved ones, explore, rest and recharge
• 16 weeks paid parental leave with health benefits for all parents, plus flexible re-entry schedules for returning to work
• Diversity initiatives that encourage Cedarians to bring their whole selves to work, including three employee resource groups: be@cedar (for BIPOC-identifying Cedarians and their allies), Pridecones (for LGBTQIA+ Cedarians and their allies) and Cedar Women+ (for female-identifying Cedarians) 
• Competitive pay, equity (for qualifying roles), and health benefits, including fertility & adoption assistance, that start on the first of the month following your start date (or on your start date if your start date coincides with the first of the month)
• Cedar matches 100% of your 401(k) contributions, up to 3% of your annual compensation
• Access to hands-on mentorship, employee and management coaching, and a team discretionary budget for learning and development resources to help you grow both professionally and personally

About us 

Cedar was co-founded by Florian Otto and Arel Lidow in 2016 after a negative medical billing experience inspired them to help improve our healthcare system. With a commitment to solving billing and patient experience issues, Cedar has become a leading healthcare technology company fueled by remarkable growth. "Over the past several years, we've raised more than $350 million in funding & have the active support of Thrive and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).

As of November 2024, Cedar is engaging with 26 million patients annually and is on target to process $3.5 billion in patient payments annually. Cedar partners with more than 55 leading healthcare providers and payers including Highmark Inc., Allegheny Health Network, Novant Health, Allina Health and Providence.