Business Analyst, Principal- Behavioral Health & Health Plan

Job Description

The Behavioral Health Services (BHS) team is responsible for developing and executing a best-in-class behavioral health insurance product for Blue Shield. The Behavioral Health Business Analyst, Principal, will report to the Director of Strategic Planning & Performance. In this role you will serve as a critical partner between the BHS team and the technical teams, through cross-functional collaboration, to identify and implement solutions that enhance efficiency, quality and value.

Our leadership model is about developing great leaders at all levels and creating opportunities for our people to grow personally, professionally, and financially. We are looking for leaders that are energized by creative and critical thinking, building and sustaining high-performing teams, getting results the right way, and fostering continuous learning.

Responsibilities

In this role, you will:

• Provide highly complex analytical support through the analysis and interpretation of data in support of behavioral health data while collaborating with cross-functional business operations
• Lead the development of annual BHS system roadmaps, associated budgets and forecasts, and build business cases for new business initiatives (cost/benefit analysis)
• Develop, prepare and analyze reports with highly complex analyzes and data for management review, and presents to various levels of management
• Define business requirements and provide analysis to identify system and process enhancements to increase operational efficiency
• Analyze actual results against plan and forecast, identify root cause of issues and recommend interventions where appropriate
• Partner with the BHS teams and support the operational systems with issue triage, requirement documentation, testing coordination and serving as the teams' champion and liaison with the technical delivery teams.
• Manage the end-to-end BHS system generated letters process including governance, creation/maintenance, and implementation
• Oversee BHS system access provisioning to ensure system compliance and security
• Build, maintain and test the BHS business continuity plan

Qualifications

Your Knowledge and Experience

• Requires mastery level knowledge of job area typically obtained through advanced education combined with experience.
• Requires a bachelor's degree or equivalent experience
• Requires at least 10 years of prior relevant experience
• Requires experience in health plan experience; having worked within managed care, academic or government payer
• Requires experience working within behavioral health, substance abuse or a mental health environment
• Requires experience defining and implementing technologies and tools to support relevant operational process automation and analysis
• Must have experience defining technology and business requirements and User Acceptance Testing (UAT) to support and sustain business applications
• Requires experience driving sustainable change across multiple stakeholders
• Desires experience with behavioral healthcare from any combination of perspectives: plan, vendor, clinical, provider relations, managed behavioral health organization, etc.
• Experience with Facets, AuthAccel and CareConnect preferred

Hybrid

This role requires employees to be in-office based on our hybrid workplace model, balancing purposeful in-person collaboration with flexibility. For most teams, this means coming into office two days each week.

Employees living more than 50 miles from an office location will work with their manager to determine in-office time based on business need.

About Us

About Blue Shield of California

As of January 2025, Blue Shield of California became a subsidiary of Ascendiun. Ascendiun is a nonprofit corporate entity that is the parent to a family of organizations including Blue Shield of California and its subsidiary, Blue Shield of California Promise Health Plan; Altais, a clinical services company; and Stellarus, a company designed to scale healthcare solutions. Together, these organizations are referred to as the Ascendiun Family of Companies.

At Blue Shield of California, our mission is to create a healthcare system worthy of our family and friends and sustainably affordable. We are transforming health care in a way that genuinely serves our nonprofit mission by lowering costs, improving quality, and enhancing the member and physician experience.

To achieve our mission, we foster an environment where all employees can thrive and contribute fully to address the needs of the various communities we serve. We are committed to creating and maintaining a supportive workplace that upholds our values and advances our goals.

Blue Shield is a U.S. News Best Company to work for, a Deloitte U.S. Best Managed Company and a Top 100 Inspiring Workplace. We were recognized by Fair360 as a Top Regional Company, and one of the 50 most community-minded companies in the United States by Points of Light. Here at Blue Shield, we strive to make a positive change across our industry and communities join us!

Our Values:

• Honest. We hold ourselves to the highest ethical and integrity standards. We build trust by doing what we say we're going to do and by acknowledging and correcting where we fall short.
• Human. We strive to listen and communicate effectively, showing empathy by understanding others' perspectives.
• Courageous. We stand up for what we believe in and are committed to the hard work necessary to achieve our ambitious goals.

Our Workplace Model

We believe in fostering a workplace environment that balances purposeful in-person collaboration with flexibility - providing clear expectations while respecting the diverse needs of our workforce. Our workplace model is designed around intentional in-person interaction, collaboration, connection, creativity and flexibility:

• For most teams, this means coming into the office two days per week.
• Employees living more than 50 miles from an office location, out of state employees, and employees in certain member-facing roles should work with their manager to determine in-office time based on business need.
• For employees with medical conditions that may impact their ability to work in-office, we are committed to engaging in an interactive process and providing reasonable accommodations to ensure their work environment is conducive to their success and well-being.

The Company reserves the right to require more presence in the office based on business needs, and requirements are subject to change with periodic reviews.

Physical Requirements:

Office Environment - roles involving part to full time schedule in Office Environment. Based in our physical offices and work from home office/deskwork - Activity level: Sedentary, frequency most of work day.

Please click here for further physical requirement detail.

Equal Employment Opportunity:

External hires must pass a background check/drug screen. Qualified applicants with arrest records and/or conviction records will be considered for employment in a manner consistent with Federal, State and local laws, including but not limited to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regards to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, protected veteran status or disability status and any other classification protected by Federal, State and local laws.

Job Info

• Job Identification 20261242
• Job Category Business and Data Analysis
• Posting Date 07/01/2026, 08:54 PM
• Job Schedule Full time
• Locations El Dorado Hills, CA, United States CA, United States Long Beach, CA, United States Lodi, CA, United States Oakland, CA, United States Rancho Cordova, CA, United States Redding, CA, United States San Diego, CA, United States Woodland Hills, CA, United States
• Pay Range for California $126170.00 to $189310.00
• Pay Range for Bay Area $142228.00 to $213404.00
• Note Please note that this range represents the pay range for this and many other positions at Blue Shield that fall into this pay grade. Blue Shield salaries are based on a variety of factors, including the candidate experience, location (California, Bay Area, or outside California), and current employee salaries for similar roles.
• Role can be filled by a candidate requiring sponsorship No