About the role
Cognizant is seeking a Manager-level Healthcare Payer Bid Manager to lead end-to-end proposal management for our most strategic healthcare payer opportunities. In this role, you will drive the development of competitive, compliant, and compelling responses across RFPs, RFIs, RFQs, renewals, and transformation pursuits. Partnering closely with sales, solutioning, operations, pricing, technology, legal, and executive stakeholders, you will shape win strategies, orchestrate proposal development, and deliver high-quality submissions that align with client requirements and Cognizant's growth objectives. You will bring deep healthcare payer domain knowledge across claims, enrollment, premium billing, contact center, care management, payment integrity, and provider operations to position differentiated solutions and support successful deal outcomes.

In this role, you will

• Lead end-to-end bid management for healthcare payer opportunities, including RFPs, RFIs, RFQs, renewals, BAFO submissions, and strategic proposal responses, building the plans, schedules, governance checkpoints, and content timelines that keep every submission on track and compliant.
• Coordinate cross-functional pursuit teams spanning sales, solution architects, operations, transition, pricing, technology, legal, compliance, and executive leadership, and facilitate kickoffs, strategy sessions, color team reviews, and submission readiness assessments.
• Ensure all customer requirements are analyzed, tracked, and addressed through compliance matrices and response management processes, and drive quality reviews for consistency, accuracy, completeness, and alignment with client evaluation criteria.
• Support solutioning teams in shaping healthcare payer operating models, transformation roadmaps, automation strategies, and BPaaS solutions, and help craft value propositions, executive summaries, win themes, and business outcome messaging.
• Serve as the central point of coordination across pursuits, prepare executives for client presentations and proposal defenses, deliver executive-level status reporting, and identify risks, assumptions, and dependencies early with clear mitigation plans.

Work model
We strive to provide flexibility wherever possible. Based on this role's business requirements, this is a remote position open to qualified applicants in the contiguous 48 states of the United States. This is a full-time position, and the successful candidate must be able to travel up to 25% as needed for business meetings. Regardless of your working arrangement, we are here to support a healthy work-life balance through our various wellbeing programs.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in healthcare payer operations, bid management, proposal management, pursuit management, consulting, or healthcare BPaaS services, including demonstrated experience leading large, complex healthcare payer RFP pursuits.
• Strong understanding of healthcare payer functions including Claims, Enrollment and Eligibility, Premium Billing, Contact Center, Provider Services, Utilization Management, Payment Integrity, and Care Management.
• Experience coordinating cross-functional teams across Sales, Solutioning, Pricing, Operations, Technology, and Legal organizations.
• Strong project management, stakeholder management, and executive communication skills, with the ability to manage multiple concurrent pursuits under aggressive deadlines.
• Experience working with proposal management tools, content repositories, and pursuit governance frameworks.

Nice-to-haves

• Familiarity with Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, Commercial, ACA, Duals, and related healthcare payer markets.
• Recent experience in a similar role within a large matrixed organization, directly supporting medium to large healthcare payer clients.

If you are ready to shape winning pursuits that transform how healthcare payers operate, we would love to hear from you. Apply today to join Cognizant.

Salary and Other Compensation
The annual salary for this position is between $110,000 - $140,000 depending on the experience and other qualifications of the successful candidate.

Benefits
Medical/Dental/Vision/Life Insurance
Paid holidays plus Paid Time Off
401(k) plan and contributions
Long-term/Short-term Disability
Paid Parental Leave
Employee Stock Purchase Plan

About Cognizant:
Cognizant (Nasdaq: CTSH) is an AI Builder and technology services provider, bridging the gap between AI investment and enterprise value by building full-stack AI solutions for our clients. Our deep industry, process and engineering expertise enables us to build an organization’s unique context into technology systems that amplify human potential, drive tangible outcomes and keep global enterprises ahead in a fast-changing world. See how at cognizant.ai or @cognizant.

Additional employment information
Compensation information is accurate as of the date of this posting. Cognizant reserves the right to modify this information at any time, subject to applicable law.

Applicants may be required to attend interviews in person or by video conference. In addition, candidates may be required to present their current state or government issued ID during each interview.

Cognizant is an equal opportunity employer. Your application and candidacy will not be considered based on race, color, sex, religion, creed, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, veteran status or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

If you have a disability that requires reasonable accommodation to search for a job opening or submit an application, please email CareersNA2@cognizant.com for roles based in the Americas or CareersIndia2@cognizant.com for roles based in India.