Director, AI Vendor Integrations & Standards

Centene Corporation•Remote-MO, WA

4d•$146,000 - $269,600•Remote

About The Position

Leads Centene’s vendor AI review and integration standards function, ensuring third-party and vendor-supplied AI is assessed, architecturally suitable for Centene’s AI Control Plane, and held to defined integration and interoperability standards throughout the vendor relationship. Directs intake review and technical assessments in coordination with AI Intake, Enterprise AI Governance, Security Risk Management/TPRM, Procurement, and Legal, ensuring AI functionality is disclosed, evaluated, and routed through required review processes before contract execution or deployment. Determines and documents the suitability of vendor solutions for Centene’s AI Control Plane, including applicable integration patterns such as agents on Centene’s agentic framework, vendor-hosted agents routing model calls through the Centene AI Gateway, and network-level observability. Owns adherence to vendor AI control-plane requirements, including conformance monitoring, model-change notifications, reassessment, remediation, and exceptions. Leads a team and represents Centene’s technical position in vendor evaluations, bake-offs, relationship management, and contract negotiations. This is a remote role within the United States, with business travel required 2–3 times per quarter. Candidates must be authorized to work in the U.S. without current or future employment-based visa sponsorship. Centene describes the opportunity as supporting its company-wide transformation and efforts to improve healthcare. Requires a bachelor’s degree and 7+ years of related experience, including prior management experience, or equivalent experience acquired through applicable knowledge, duties, scope, and skills. Preferred qualifications include experience vetting and implementing vendor solutions, preferably AI solutions, and a proven track record of partnering across a large organization to build an effective vetting and evaluation process. Pay range: $146,000–$269,600 per year. Centene describes its benefits package as including competitive pay, health insurance, 401(k) and stock purchase plans, tuition reimbursement, paid time off and holidays, and a flexible approach to work schedules. Total compensation may include incentives, and benefits may be subject to eligibility. Pay may vary based on skills, experience, education, and other job-related factors permitted by law.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree and 7+ years of related experience, including prior management experience; or equivalent experience acquired through applicable knowledge, duties, scope, and skills.
Authorization to work in the United States without the need for current or future employment-based visa sponsorship.
Business travel 2–3 times per quarter.

Nice To Haves

Experience vetting and implementing vendor solutions, preferably AI solutions.
Proven track record partnering across a large organization to build an effective vetting and evaluation process.

Responsibilities

Lead intake review and assessment of new vendor AI, AI functionality activated within existing vendor platforms, and changes to current vendor offerings, coordinating with AI Intake and Security Risk Management.
Administer vendor AI due diligence, including questionnaires covering model identification, agentic behavior, AI lifecycle governance, testing, data use, lineage, orchestration, retention, subprocessors, PHI/PII handling, MCP servers, and incident response.
Determine and document vendor solutions’ suitability for Centene’s AI Control Plane; select and validate integration patterns and identify remediation needs or exceptions.
Assure conformance with vendor AI integration and interoperability standards, including MCP and open APIs, model routing, prompt and agent versioning and change approval, telemetry and trace schemas, and cost attribution and budget controls.
Establish evaluation frameworks for vendor AI bake-offs and competitive assessments, including scoring criteria, reference architecture fit, evidence expectations, and recommendations.
Review vendor AI documentation covering architecture, security, data flow, AI governance, and operational support for evidence-based claims, limitations, and explainability.
Partner with Procurement and Legal to define AI-specific contractual requirements, including governance and risk clauses, incident response and SLA expectations, audit rights, data-training restrictions, and model-change notification.
Own ongoing vendor AI control-plane adherence through conformance reviews, model and capability change notifications, reassessment triggers, escalation, and remediation.
Ensure vendor AI systems and agents are registered in the enterprise AI Inventory and Agent Registry with required metadata, risk tier, ownership, and lifecycle state, and maintain control evidence for regulatory, market conduct, and contractual requests.
Serve as the technical reviewer and escalation point for AI functionality identified during third-party intake.
Maintain and publish vendor AI standards, reference integration patterns, evidence lists, and routing guidance.
Recruit, develop, and lead a team performing vendor AI assessment and integration design; set technical standards and quality expectations.
Partner with AI Enablement, Enterprise AI Governance, Security, Data & AI platform teams, Procurement, Legal, and business sponsors, and represent Centene’s technical position in vendor discussions and negotiations.
Perform other duties as assigned.
Comply with all policies and standards.