AI Strategy and Portfolio Principal

Job Description Summary:This role is responsible for the enterprise management, governance, optimization, and value realization of Artificial Intelligence capabilities across the organization. Serving as the enterprise subject matter expert for AI portfolio management, model governance, AI technology selection, and Responsible AI practices, the role ensures AI investments align with strategic priorities, regulatory expectations, and business outcomes while maximizing return on investment and managing technology cost. This role serves as an enterprise advisor and governance leader, partnering across the organization to guide the responsible adoption, management, and optimization of emerging technologies and AI-enabled capabilities. Through influence and collaboration, the role helps ensure investments align to strategic priorities, appropriate governance practices are followed, risks are effectively managed, and measurable business value is realized.Job DescriptionEnterprise AI Strategy & Portfolio Management. Own the enterprise AI product/project portfolio. Develop and maintain the enterprise AI portfolio strategy and AI capability maturity roadmap, prioritizing investments and balancing cost against value across initiatives. Establish the AI enablement process, support BCBSA teams with AI business cases, identify and eliminate duplicate AI capabilities across departments, and optimize enterprise AI spending. Applies enterprise thinking, strategic planning, investment prioritization, and cost-benefit and portfolio-optimization analysis to deliver the AI portfolio roadmap, executive portfolio dashboards, and a repeatable AI business case methodology.AI Model Lifecycle Oversight. Act as operational lead and subject matter expert supporting the enterprise AI Review Board, ensuring responsible AI policies are followed within Technology Operations. Review AI use cases in support of business-team enablement, maintain the enterprise AI inventory, and define AI approval workflows for tool and model selection in collaboration with Enterprise Architecture and Enterprise Engineering. Govern models across their lifecycle by providing the frameworks and templates teams use to monitor the production model inventory, model applicability, drift, hallucination rates, and quality; review retraining schedules and retirement; and conduct periodic model reviews to ensure ongoing business fitness (this role provides oversight frameworks and does not itself perform statistical monitoring). Brings risk-assessment, data-governance, AI-security, model-evaluation, and performance-measurement discipline, and uses facilitation and consensus-building to align stakeholders on model management decisions.AI Financial Management & Value Measurement. Partner with FinOps to bring financial and value transparency to the AI portfolio. Report on AI operating expenses, token and GPU utilization, and cost avoidance; recommend approaches to optimizing LLM usage costs and forecasting AI spend; support development of AI chargeback models; support enterprise AI licensing with Procurement; and develop and report key AI usage metrics (e.g., cost per transaction, per employee, and per AI interaction). Define and recommend methods to measure financial, operational, employee-productivity, including (for e.g.) time saved, reduced administrative burden, and indirect provider and member experience gains. Applies financial modeling, cost-benefit analysis, KPI development, and executive reporting so leadership dashboards can answer where the organization is investing, what value it is getting, which AI initiatives are succeeding, and which should stop.AI Technology Advisory & Architecture Guidance. Serve as internal consultant helping business and technology teams select the right AI solution collaborating with key stakeholders evaluating foundation models, commercial and open-source large language models, AI agents and agent frameworks, RAG architectures, AI orchestration and prompt-management platforms, and AI evaluation tooling. Collaborates with partners across technology, including, AI architecture, cloud AI platform, model-evaluation, API-integration, and AI-security expertise to provide, defensible recommendations to business teamsCross-functional Leadership & Stakeholder Partnership. Lead by influence across the enterprise, partnering with business leaders and other key stakeholders to advance responsible, value-driven AI adoption. Uses influencing-without-authority, consensus-building, negotiation, change-management, facilitation, and executive-presentation skills, together with program-leadership discipline, to align diverse stakeholders and drive enterprise outcomes without direct reporting authority.The posting range for this position is:130,300.00 - 188,950.00Qualifications:Education Required BS ; or equivalent experiencePreferred MSExperience Required 10+ Years 10+ years of experience in enterprise technology strategy, governance, portfolio management, or related disciplines5+ years AI, analytics, or machine learning leadership experienceExperience managing enterprise technology portfoliosExperience leading cross-functional initiativesExperience presenting to executive leadershipExperience managing strategic technology investmentsExperience in the healthcare or payer industryKnowledge Skills and Abilities Ability to translate complex AI concepts into clear business terms for executive audiences, and to influence and build consensus without direct authority.Strong understanding of:Generative AI, large language models, machine learning, AI agents, and foundation modelsRAG architectures and prompt engineering conceptsModel lifecycle management and model governanceEnterprise architecture, technology strategy, and portfolio managementAnalytical and financial-modelingPreferred Skills:Cloud AI platforms: Microsoft Azure AI, Amazon Web Services AI services, and Google Cloud Vertex AIFoundation models: OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, and Meta LlamaAI gateway technologies, AI observability platforms, and model monitoring toolsAI FinOps and technology portfolio managementEnterprise Architecture and Agile portfolio managementHealthcare interoperability, AI procurement, and third-party model evaluationCertifications & Licenses Preferred: Certified Project Management Professional (PMP) - PMIPreferred: Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Engineer Associate - Microsoft#LI_HYBRIDThe posted salary range is the lowest to highest salary we, in good faith, believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting. We may ultimately pay more or less than the hiring range and this hiring range may also be modified in the future. A candidate’s position within the hiring range may be based on several factors including, but not limited to, specific competencies, relevant education, qualifications, certifications, relevant experience, skills, seniority, performance, shift, travel requirements, and business or organizational needs. This job is also eligible for annual bonus incentive pay. We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off, 11 holidays, medical/dental/vision insurance, generous 401(k) matching, lifestyle spending account and many other benefits to eligible employees. Note: No amount of pay is considered to be wages or compensation until such amount is earned, vested, and determinable. The amount and availability of any bonus, commission, or any other form of compensation that are allocable to a particular employee remains in the Company's sole discretion unless and until paid and may be modified at the Company’s sole discretion, consistent with the law. SummaryLocation: US IL Chicago E. RandolphType: Full time