Principal Program Manager, Strategic Planning & Transformation

McKesson is an impact-driven, Fortune 10 company that touches virtually every aspect of healthcare. We are known for delivering insights, products, and services that make quality care more accessible and affordable. Here, we focus on the health, happiness, and well-being of you and those we serve – we care.

What you do at McKesson matters. We foster a culture where you can grow, make an impact, and are empowered to bring new ideas. Together, we thrive as we shape the future of health for patients, our communities, and our people. If you want to be part of tomorrow’s health today, we want to hear from you.

Job Summary

The Principal Program Manager, Strategic Planning & Transformation role is responsible for shaping, operationalizing, and driving Enterprise Applications strategy. This leader partners closely with senior executives and cross‑functional teams to translate strategic priorities into actionable roadmaps, measurable outcomes, and sustained business impact. The role blends strategic planning, execution rigor, financial stewardship, vendor management, and change leadership across complex, matrixed environments.

Key Responsibilities

Strategy Development & Alignment

• Lead development of multi-year strategic plans aligned to enterprise priorities, operating models, and financial targets.
• Translate strategy into clear goals, success metrics, and execution roadmaps across portfolios and teams.
• Assess internal and external trends, risks, and opportunities to inform strategic decision‑making.
• Develop business cases, investment strategies, and financial models to evaluate strategic opportunities, prioritize initiatives, and optimize resource allocation.

Execution & Portfolio Leadership

• Drive execution of strategic initiatives, ensuring alignment across business, technology, finance, and operations.
• Establish governance, prioritization, and performance tracking for strategic programs and investments.
• Identify dependencies, risks, and tradeoffs; recommend mitigation strategies to senior leadership.
• Partner closely with Finance to manage strategic investment portfolios, track benefits realization, monitor budgets, and ensure delivery of expected business value.
• Oversee strategic vendor and partner relationships, ensuring contract compliance, performance management, risk mitigation, and alignment to business objectives.

Stakeholder Partnership & Influence

• Act as a trusted advisor to senior leaders, enabling data‑driven decisions and alignment across stakeholders.
• Facilitate executive‑level discussions, workshops, and planning forums to drive clarity and commitment.
• Communicate strategy and progress in a compelling, concise, and actionable manner.
• Provide executive leadership with recommendations that balance business outcomes, financial performance, operational capacity, and strategic risk.

• Operational Excellence & Change Leadership

• Champion disciplined planning, execution, and continuous improvement practices.
• Drive adoption of new ways of working, operating models, and governance structures.
• Support change management, communications, and capability‑building to ensure sustainable outcomes.

Communication & Leadership

• Excellent leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills, with the ability to influence senior executives and guide large, distributed teams.
• Demonstrated success in stakeholder and vendor management, including contract negotiations, performance oversight, service‑level management, and delivery accountability.
• Strong executive presence with the ability to communicate strategic, operational, and financial insights to diverse audiences.
• Proven ability to build alignment, drive consensus, and influence outcomes across a broad set of internal and external stakeholders.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Strategy, Engineering, Finance, or a related field (MBA or equivalent preferred).
• 10+ years of experience in strategy, management consulting, transformation, program leadership, or equivalent roles.
• Proven experience leading complex, cross‑functional initiatives with executive visibility.
• Strong strategic planning, analytical, problem‑solving, and financial management skills, including experience developing business cases, managing budgets, forecasting investments, tracking operational spend, and measuring return on investment (ROI).
• Demonstrated financial acumen with experience evaluating investment decisions, portfolio tradeoffs, business value realization, and alignment to organizational financial objectives.
• Demonstrated ability to influence without authority and operate effectively in a matrixed organization.
• Experience managing strategic vendors and partner relationships, including contract governance, performance management, negotiations, and service delivery oversight.

Preferred Qualifications

• Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and PMP or Agile/Scrum certification highly desirable. Other valuable certifications include Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, SAFe, or specific technology/platform certifications (e.g., AWS, Azure).
• Experience in enterprise technology, digital transformation, operating model redesign, or large-scale business transformation.
• Experience managing significant technology, consulting, or managed service vendor relationships and associated budgets.
• Background in healthcare, regulated industries, or large-scale enterprises.

Leadership Competencies

Strategic Thinking: Long‑term, enterprise-level perspective with strong business judgment.

Influence & Collaboration: Builds alignment and commitment across diverse stakeholders.

Execution Rigor: Drives results through disciplined planning and follow‑through.

Change Leadership: Leads teams through ambiguity and transformation effectively.

Financial & Business Acumen: Demonstrates strong understanding of financial drivers, investment planning, portfolio economics, vendor management, and value realization to support sound business decisions.

Vendor & Partner Leadership: Establishes productive external partnerships, holds vendors accountable to commitments, and maximizes value from strategic investments.

We are proud to offer a competitive compensation package at McKesson as part of our Total Rewards. This is determined by several factors, including performance, experience and skills, equity, regular job market evaluations, and geographical markets. The pay range shown below is aligned with McKesson's pay philosophy, and pay will always be compliant with any applicable regulations. In addition to base pay, other compensation, such as an annual bonus or long-term incentive opportunities may be offered.

Our Base Pay Range for this position

$170,100 - $283,500

McKesson is an Equal Opportunity Employer

McKesson provides equal employment opportunities to applicants and employees, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability, age, genetic information, or any other legally protected category. For additional information on McKesson’s full Equal Employment Opportunity policies, visit our Equal Employment Opportunity page.

McKesson is committed to being an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer and offers opportunities to all job seekers including job seekers with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation to assist with your job search or application for employment, please contact us by sending an email to (United States) View email address on click.appcast.io or (Canada) View email address on click.appcast.io. Resumes or CVs submitted to this email box will not be accepted.

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