Associate Director, Capability

Optum; Dublin; Hybrid; EUR 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Optum Ireland is seeking an Associate Director, Payment Integrity Capability to lead a portfolio of cross-functional initiatives in a fast-paced, high-value environment. The role blends strategy, analysis and delivery, translating opportunities into measurable financial benefits.

Based in Ireland with hybrid work between Dublin or Letterkenny offices and home-based telecommuting, you will drive value, establish KPIs and lead diverse teams without direct authority.

Qualifications

• Demonstrated leadership in cross-functional initiatives.
• Strategic thinking with analytic capabilities.
• Delivery-focused with measurable outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Lead multiple concurrent capability initiatives from opportunity framing through proof of concept, scale or closure.
• Translate strategic priorities and operational pain points into clear problem statements, hypotheses, outcomes, roadmaps, resource needs, dependencies and decision points.
• Maintain a prioritized portfolio and delivery backlog; balance urgent business needs with longer-term capability building and trade-offs.
• Form and lead time-boxed, cross-functional teams for complex opportunities; establish ownership and scale/drop criteria.
• Operate across varied subject areas and tackle unstructured work where ownership is not defined.

Job description

Improve the lives of others while Caring. Connecting. Growing together.

Job Description - Associate Director, Capability (2391463)

Associate Director, Capability - 2391463

Optum is a global organization that delivers care, aided by technology to help millions of people live healthier lives. The work you do with our team will directly improve health outcomes by connecting people with the care, pharmacy benefits, data and resources they need to feel their best. Here, you will find a culture guided by diversity and inclusion, talented peers, comprehensive benefits and career development opportunities. Come make an impact on the communities we serve as you help us advance health equity on a global scale. Join us to start Caring. Connecting. Growing together.

About the Role:

We have a key opportunity for an Associate Director, Payment Integrity Capability, based in Ireland. This is a hands‑on leadership role in a fast‑paced, high‑value environment. The successful candidate will lead a varied portfolio of cross‑functional initiatives and help shape how Payment Integrity identifies opportunities, tests solutions, scales proven practices and measures value.

The role is broader than traditional program coordination. It requires an agile, curious and outcomes‑focused leader who can move between strategy, analysis and delivery; bring structure to ambiguous problems; and translate each initiative into clearly defined financial benefits or business KPI improvement. The candidate will work through a matrix of Operations, Business Reporting, Analytics, Finance, Procurement and Vendor Management, Transformation, Product and Technology partners, often without direct authority.

Careers with Optum offer flexible work arrangements and individuals who live and work in the Republic of Ireland will have the opportunity to split their monthly work hours between our Dublin or Letterkenny office and telecommuting from a home‑based office in a hybrid work model.

Leadership Profile:

The successful candidate will be an agile, intellectually curious and commercially minded leader with a bias for action. They will be comfortable taking ownership before every detail is known, creating structure from ambiguity and working across several initiatives without losing sight of value. They will combine analytical rigor with pragmatic delivery, challenge weak assumptions constructively and build credibility through transparent measurement and follow‑through.

Kay Responsibilities:

• Lead multiple concurrent capability initiatives from opportunity framing through proof of concept, scale or closure, adapting the delivery approach to the size, uncertainty and risk of each initiative
• Translate strategic priorities and operational pain points into clear problem statements, hypotheses, outcomes, roadmaps, resource needs, dependencies and decision points
• Maintain a prioritized portfolio and delivery backlog; balance urgent business needs with longer‑term capability building and make transparent trade‑offs across scope, capacity and value
• Form and lead time‑boxed, cross‑functional teams for complex cross‑PI opportunities; establish clear ownership, working rhythms and scale‑or‑drop criteria
• Operate comfortably across varied subject areas and take on new or unstructured work where ownership, process or solution is not yet defined

Value Definition, Business Cases & Benefits Realization

• Define the impact and benefit logic for every initiative, including financial outcomes such as cost reduction, cost avoidance, medical cost savings, productivity and growth, and non‑financial outcomes such as quality, turnaround time, capacity, adoption, experience, risk and control effectiveness
• Develop business cases, benefit maps, baselines and measurement plans with Finance, Analytics and business owners; document assumptions, attribution, dependencies and potential dis‑benefits
• Establish leading and lagging KPIs, targets and data sources before delivery begins; distinguish activity, output, operational outcome and realized enterprise value
• Own a concise value scorecard that gives leadership a live view of expected versus realized benefits, delivery confidence, risks and corrective actions
• Validate whether benefits are sustained after implementation and transition ongoing measurement and accountability to the appropriate business owner

Performance & Business Intelligence

• Partner with Business Reporting and Analytics to identify cross‑PI outliers, value leakage, emerging risks and improvement opportunities
• Design signal‑to‑action triggers and early‑warning measures that convert insights into accountable interventions, rather than creating reporting for reporting’s sake
• Rationalize KPIs and improve metric definitions, data lineage and decision usefulness across operational and leadership reporting
• Use quantitative and qualitative analysis to diagnose root causes, test