Manager, Implementation & Operations

About Protocol Behavioral Health

Our mission is to make cancer care better for patients, providers, and payers — improving outcomes through specialized behavioral health and supportive care, embedded within oncology care teams.

A cancer diagnosis changes everything, not just a patient's physical health, and we exist to make sure their emotional needs are met alongside their treatment, not as an afterthought. We do this by partnering directly with oncology clinics and cancer centers and using the collaborative care model to bring mental health support into the room where cancer care already happens. That means patients get support earlier and more consistently and providers get a partner equipped to handle the mental health care their patients need.

Our team is built by experienced healthcare operators and executives who have built and scaled partnerships across behavioral health, oncology, and value-based care. We're a fast-growing, early-stage company, and every new partnership moves us closer to making specialized behavioral health a standard part of cancer care.

About the Role

The Manager, Implementation & Operations will serve as the primary point person for new partner implementations, translating partnership structure and market-specific nuances into a clear, executable plan and driving it from kickoff through go-live and into steady-state operations. This role sits at the intersection of external partner management and internal cross-functional execution, working closely with clinical, operations, and technology teams to keep workstreams aligned and launches on track.

Reporting to the Senior Director, Business Operations, this role begins with project management support while learning Protocol's model directly, then transitions to independently owning implementations. The ideal candidate is a structured, proactive executor who thrives in ambiguity and owns outcomes rather than just tasks.

Additionally, this role will be responsible for broader business operations initiatives outside of implementation work. Time and focus will flex between active implementations and operations projects as volume rises and falls, with room to take on higher-level ownership of select work across toolkits, playbooks, and cross-team processes.

In this role, you will:

Serve as the primary point person for new partner implementations — leading partner meetings, building and maintaining project plans, and coordinating technology setup end to end

Own up to two concurrent client implementations once fully ramped, including onsite support during launch and oversight of education and marketing material delivery

Translate partnership structure and market- or partner-specific nuances into a clear, executable plan, anticipating risks early and driving mitigation plans without waiting to be asked

Lead complex partner implementation conversations as a proactive problem solver — someone who surfaces issues and drives them to resolution, not just a project manager keeping things on track

• Own implementation outcomes, not just task completion — finding the problems and having the hard conversations, not simply keeping things on track
• Refine/Iterate on current implementation project management templates and the existing implementation playbook
• Flex time and focus between implementation work and business operations projects as implementation volume speeds up and slows down

Take higher-level ownership of select work currently managed by the broader operations team — including optimizing toolkits and playbooks and improving manual processes — partnering cross-functionally to increase efficiency across operations and the clinical team

Who we're looking for:

4-6 years of experience with a track record of owning implementations end to end

Healthcare implementation experience, ideally within a managed-services model; SaaS implementation experience also considered, provided there is strong operational (not just project management) ownership

• Working knowledge of how a clinic functions, including revenue cycle fundamentals, and experience or aptitude for driving provider behavior change
• Familiarity with Electronic Medical Record (EMR) or Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems and the technical aspects of implementation
• A proactive problem solver who identifies issues and leads the conversations to resolve them, rather than operating solely as a project manager
• Demonstrated ability to independently drive work forward, solve problems, and manage ambiguity
• Comfortable holding multiple concurrent workstreams and flexing between client-facing implementation work and internal business operations projects

Strong project management fundamentals — building and iterating on project plans, templates, and playbooks — paired with excellent relationship-management and communication skills to lead partner-facing meetings independently

Ability to travel 20%-30% as needed to support onsite launches and partner meetings

Preferred qualifications:

• Prior experience in oncology, behavioral health, or value-based care settings
• Experience in a high-growth, early-stage healthcare services startup environment
• Background in management consulting within healthcare
• Experience performance analyses and translating data/findings into operational workflows
• Entrepreneurial spirit
• Why work at Protocol?
• Working at Protocol Behavioral Health means joining a purpose-driven team at the forefront of transforming cancer care through compassionate, integrated mental health support. Every team member plays a vital role in addressing one of the most overlooked challenges in oncology: ensuring patients have timely access to high-quality behavioral health care. With a leadership team composed of seasoned experts from top healthcare and behavioral health organizations, Protocol offers a rare opportunity to learn from the best while helping build something truly meaningful from the ground up.
• We foster a collaborative, mission-first culture where innovation, empathy, and excellence are not just encouraged, they’re expected. Employees benefit from flexible hybrid work, competitive healthcare coverage, generous paid time off, and the fulfillment of knowing their work directly improves lives. If you’re looking to grow professionally while making a tangible difference in healthcare, Protocol could be a great fit for you.