Executive Director, Digital Engineering- Aetna Member Care and Journey Services

9025 CVS Shared Services Resources LLC; Hartford (CT); On-site; USD 201,000 - 335,000; Full time

Job summary

CVS Health is seeking an Executive Director of Digital Engineering for Aetna Member Care and Journey Services in Hartford, CT. You will set technical vision, guide architecture for backend APIs and microservices, and lead global teams to deliver scalable, cloud-native solutions across digital and partner channels.

The role emphasizes reliability, observability, and AI-driven automation, with a focus on regulated healthcare environments and enterprise interoperability.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of software engineering experience with deep expertise in backend systems, distributed services, and API platforms.
• Proven experience leading large engineering organizations delivering mission-critical services.
• Strong background in AWS cloud platform, microservices architecture, CI/CD pipelines, and DevOps/SRE practices.
• Demonstrated success driving stability, resiliency, and observability improvements at scale.

Responsibilities

• Lead design, development, and delivery of scalable backend systems, APIs, and microservices powering member-facing capabilities.
• Establish standards for availability, resiliency, performance, and disaster recovery across all services.
• Drive AI-native engineering initiatives, including AI-assisted development and AI-powered product features for members.
• Own strategy for internal and external API integrations ensuring secure and reusable data exchange.

Skills

Backend systems

Distributed services

API platforms

AWS cloud platform

CI/CD pipelines

DevOps/SRE practices

AI/LLM tooling

Leadership

Education

Master’s degree preferred in Computer Science/Engineering

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

CI/CD tooling

Job description

We’re building a world of health around every individual — shaping a more connected, convenient and compassionate health experience. At CVS Health®, you’ll be surrounded by passionate colleagues who care deeply, innovate with purpose, hold ourselves accountable and prioritize safety and quality in everything we do. Join us and be part of something bigger – helping to simplify health care one person, one family and one community at a time.

Position Summary

The Executive Director, Digital Engineering- Aetna Member Care and Journey Services is a senior technology leader responsible for setting the technical vision, architectural direction, and engineering execution for member centric services. This role leads large-scale engineering teams that build high-performance backend APIs, microservices, and cloud‑native systems that power member experiences across digital, agent, provider, and partner channels. The leader ensures exceptional service stability, resiliency, innovation velocity, and alignment with enterprise user experience and operational goals.

Key Responsibilities

• Backend API & Microservices Engineering Leadership
  • Lead the design, development, and delivery of scalable backend systems, APIs, and microservices powering member-facing capabilities.
  • Define API contract standards, and integration patterns used across Member Services platforms.
  • Drive service modernization by adopting cloud‑native architectures, containerization, and event-driven patterns.
• Service Stability, Observability & Resiliency
  • Establish standards for availability, resiliency, performance, and disaster recovery across all services.
  • Implement SLO/SLI/error budget frameworks, health checks, and high‑availability architectures.
  • Institutionalize strong observability practices using metrics, logs, traces, and distributed monitoring.
  • Drive continuous reliability improvements through chaos engineering, automated fault injection, and proactive root‑cause analysis.
• AI‑Driven Engineering & Automation
  • Drive the shift to an AI-native engineering organization — making AI-assisted development the default across design, code generation, review, testing, and operations — and build the tooling standards, enablement, and adoption targets that make it stick.
  • Build AI-powered product features for members — personalization, intelligent routing, and automated decisioning — partnering with product and data science to take them from experimentation into production, with the privacy, PHI-handling, and human-in-the-loop guardrails a regulated member population requires.
• API Integrations & Enterprise Interoperability
  • Own strategy for internal and external API integrations supporting member services and other enterprise systems.
  • Standardize integration patterns to ensure secure, performant, and consistent data exchange across domains.
  • Partner with product, security, architecture, and platform engineering to ensure scalable, compliant, and reusable integration solutions.
• Innovation & Technology Strategy
  • Drive technology exploration and rapid experimentation in areas such as LLM/AI augmentation, serverless compute, real-time data streaming, and next‑gen integration frameworks.
  • Build and maintain a long‑term roadmap for modernizing legacy components, platformizing capabilities, and increasing engineering velocity.
  • Champion engineering excellence and best practices across code quality, testing, automation, and release reliability.
• Leadership, Talent & Organizational Development
  • Build, lead, and mentor high-performing engineering teams across global locations.
  • Foster a culture of innovation, accountability, psychological safety, and continuous learning.
  • Define organizational structures, role expectations, and growth paths to develop future engineering leaders.

Required Qualifications

• 15+ years of software engineering experience with deep expertise in backend systems, distributed services, and API platforms.
• Proven experience leading large engineering organizations delivering mission‑critical services.
• Strong background in AWS cloud platform, microservices architecture, CI/CD pipelines, and DevOps/SRE practices.
• Demonstrated success driving stability, resiliency, and observability improvements at scale.
• Experience leveraging AI, LLM-based engineering and operational tooling.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in regulated industries (healthcare, financial services, insurance).
• Background in building member, patient, or consumer-facing digital experiences.
• Executive-level communication and strategic influence across complex organizations.

Education

Master’s degree preferred. Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

Location

This leader will be required to work out of or travel to Hartford, CT.

Pay Range

The typical pay range for this role is: $175,100.00 - $334,750.00 This pay range represents the base hourly rate or base annual full-time salary for all positions in the job grade within which this position falls. The actual base salary offer will depend on a variety of factors including experience, education, geography and other relevant factors. This position is eligible for a CVS Health bonus, commission or short-term incentive program in addition to the base pay range listed above. This position also includes an award target in the company’s equity award program.

Benefits

Great benefits for great people We take pride in offering a comprehensive and competitive mix of pay and benefits that reflects our commitment to our colleagues and their families. This full‑time position is eligible for a comprehensive benefits package designed to support the physical, emotional, and financial well‑being of colleagues and their families. Additional details about available benefits are provided during the application process and on Benefits Moments.

• medical, dental, and vision coverage, paid time off, retirement savings options, wellness programs, and other resources, based on eligibility.

Application Window

We anticipate the application window for this opening will close on: 12/31/2026

EEO Statement

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state and local laws.

Our Culture

Our Work Experience is the combination of everything that's unique about us: our culture, our core values, our company meetings, our commitment to sustainability, our recognition programs, but most importantly, it's our people. Our employees are self-disciplined, hard working, curious, trustworthy, humble, and truthful. They make choices according to what is best for the team, they live for opportunities to collaborate and make a difference, and they make us the #1 Top Workplace in the area.