Procurement Center of Excellence - AI & Automation Lead

CVS Health•Woonsocket, RI

3d•Hybrid

About The Position

CVS Health is building a world-class analytics organization within the Procurement Center of Excellence (CoE), and we are looking for a Senior Manager, AI & Automation to lead one of its most critical functions. The procurement department has a strong pipeline of automation and AI initiatives and a genuine appetite to change how it operates, and this role is responsible for making that happen. The scope of this role spans the full automation landscape — from AI agents, prompt engineering, and skill development in Copilot Studio, to process automation and RPA where those approaches better fit the problem. Day to day, that means assessing what a business problem requires, selecting the right solution, and owning the work to scope, prototype, and deliver it. When solutions require IT development, this role acts as the technical SME through deployment and owns training the department on how to use what is built. Strong candidates will be technically hands-on, fluent across the range of automation tools and approaches available, and motivated by applying the right technology to create real, measurable impact for the business. This is a hybrid position based in our Woonsocket or Hartford hub.

Requirements

7 years of overall relevant work experience
5 or more years of experience in a technical or business facing role with hands-on involvement in AI or machine learning solution development.
Demonstrated experience with prompt engineering, including structured prompting, chain-of-thought reasoning, and output formatting for production use cases.
Hands-on experience gathering requirements, building, and deploying AI agents.
Experience with Copilot Studio or a comparable platform for AI skill and agent development
Ability to communicate complex AI concepts clearly to non-technical stakeholders and translate business problems into well-scoped technical solutions.

Nice To Haves

Experience with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) architectures and vector search
Familiarity with Model Context Protocol (MCP) or comparable approaches to integrating AI models with external data sources
Proficiency in Python for AI prototyping, automation, and solution development
Experience with Google Cloud Platform
Experience integrating AI solutions with enterprise systems such as SAP Ariba, ServiceNow, or Microsoft 365
Familiarity with AI evaluation frameworks and approaches to monitoring model output quality in production
Background in procurement, supply chain, or a similarly process-rich enterprise domain is a plus but not required

Responsibilities

Scope and prototype AI solutions for procurement use cases, selecting the appropriate approach across prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, agent frameworks, and tool-enabled workflows.
Build and deploy AI skills, prompts, and agents using Copilot Studio and other relevant platforms, delivering solutions that are reliable, well-documented, and usable by non-technical procurement staff.
For solutions requiring IT development, define technical requirements, act as the AI SME through the development lifecycle, and validate the delivered solution against the intended use case before go-live.
Develop, test, and refine prompts and prompt architectures for procurement use cases, applying structured techniques to maximize model reliability and output quality.
Stay current on frontier model capabilities across leading providers and apply that knowledge to make well-reasoned decisions about model selection and solution architecture.
Identify where solutions require guardrails, structured output formatting, or human-in-the-loop validation, and implement those controls as part of the design.
Evaluate incoming requests from procurement stakeholders to determine the right class of solution — distinguishing between use cases that genuinely require AI and those better addressed through process automation, RPA, or structured workflow logic.
For use cases identified as RPA or process automation problems, gather requirements, and either build a solution in collaboration with CoE teams or partner with IT to scope and deliver the appropriate automation.
Work with CoE leadership and procurement stakeholders to assess the feasibility, complexity, and business impact of proposed initiatives, and sequence work to deliver near-term value while building toward longer-term capability.
Own training and enablement of the procurement department as solutions go live, helping non-technical users understand what they have, how it works, and how to use it effectively.