Director Of Unified Communications

How you move is why we’re here. ® Now more than ever.

Get back to what you need and love to do. The possibilities are endless...

Now more than ever, our guiding principles are helping us in our search for exceptional talent - candidates who align with our unique workplace culture and who want to maximize the abundant opportunities for growth and success.

If this describes you then let’s talk!

HSS is consistently among the top-ranked hospitals for orthopedics and rheumatology by U.S. News & World Report. As a recipient of the Magnet Award for Nursing Excellence, HSS was the first hospital in New York City to receive the distinguished designation. Whether you are early in your career or an expert in your field, you will find HSS an innovative, supportive and inclusive environment.

Working with colleagues who love what they do and are deeply committed to our Mission, you too can be part of our transformation across the enterprise.

Emp Status

Regular Full time

Work Shift

Compensation Range

The base pay scale for this position is $128,500.00 - $195,750.00. In addition, this position will be eligible for additional benefits consistent with the role. The salary of the finalist selected for this role will be determined based on various factors, including but not limited to: scope of role, level of experience, education, accomplishments, internal equity, budget, and subject to Fair Market Value evaluation. The hiring range listed is a good faith determination of potential compensation at the time of this job advertisement and may be modified in the future.

What you will be doing

Key Responsibilities

Unified Communications Program Execution & Technology Leadership

• Lead the execution and continuous enhancement of Unified Communications services aligned with organizational objectives, healthcare business needs, clinical workflows, and operational priorities.

• Maintain and manage a multi-year roadmap for voice, video, messaging, collaboration, mobility, telecommunications, and contact center technologies, including lifecycle planning, dependency management, sequencing, and delivery milestones.

• Translate technology modernization priorities into executable programs, service improvements, and measurable operational outcomes.

• Lead transformation from legacy communications platforms to modern cloud, hybrid, and AI-enabled communication services while maintaining service reliability and operational continuity.

• Partner with clinical stakeholders, operations leaders, and technology teams to identify, prioritize, and deliver communication capabilities that improve patient access, clinician responsiveness, employee collaboration, and business operations.

• Implement and maintain governance processes, standards, policies, service delivery frameworks, and operational controls for enterprise Unified Communications services.

• Provide clear leadership communication, decision support, and status reporting for Unified Communications initiatives, risks, roadmap progress, and service performance.

Unified Communications Operations

• Direct the design, implementation, administration, support, and operational management of enterprise Unified Communications infrastructure and services.

• Oversee Avaya voice platforms, voicemail systems, call routing solutions, SIP infrastructure, session border controllers, telecom circuits, collaboration platforms, and related technologies.

• Ensure high availability, reliability, scalability, resiliency, and performance of voice and communication services that support clinical operations, emergency response, patient care delivery, and business continuity requirements.

• Lead incident management, problem management, root cause analysis, operational readiness, change management, and continuous improvement activities for all Unified Communications services.

• Manage telecommunications carriers, cloud communication providers, SIP trunking services, support partners, managed service providers, and service-level commitments.

• Establish operational metrics, service dashboards, performance reviews, and continuous improvement routines to improve reliability, responsiveness, service quality, and customer experience.

Contact Center & Customer Experience Technologies

• Provide operational leadership for enterprise contact center technologies supporting patient access, scheduling, service desks, clinical support services, and customer engagement functions.

• Partner with business, clinical, and operational leaders to improve customer and patient experience through reliable routing, reporting, analytics, automation, and omnichannel communication capabilities.

• Oversee call analytics, workforce optimization, quality monitoring, reporting, and service metrics that enable performance management and continuous service improvement.

• Lead modernization efforts involving cloud contact center platforms, AI-powered customer engagement solutions, intelligent call routing, virtual assistants, transcription, and automation where appropriate.

• Maintain contact center technology standards and operational practices that support scalability, security, compliance, and consistent service delivery.

Collaboration & Digital Workplace Technologies

• Lead enterprise collaboration services, including voice and telephony platforms, video conferencing technologies, messaging and presence solutions, mobile communications, team collaboration platforms, and unified messaging solutions.

• Partner with Digital Workplace, Infrastructure, End User Computing, Information Security, and operational teams to deliver a seamless communication experience across devices, locations, and workforce models.

• Evaluate and implement technologies that enhance workforce collaboration, clinical communication, productivity, accessibility, reliability, and secure communication across the enterprise.

• Ensure collaboration platforms align with organizational standards for lifecycle management, cybersecurity, user experience, supportability, and operational performance.

AI-Powered Communications & Innovation

• Evaluate, implement, optimize, and operationalize AI-enabled Unified Communications and contact center technologies in partnership with technology, security, privacy, compliance, and business stakeholders.

• Lead adoption and operational management of conversational AI, virtual assistants, intelligent call routing, AI-powered contact center analytics, speech analytics, voice biometrics, transcription, translation, generative AI customer engagement platforms, patient communication solutions, and predictive workforce management tools where appropriate.

• Develop governance, security, operational standards, support models, and measurement approaches for AI-enabled communication technologies.

• Identify opportunities to leverage AI and automation to improve operational efficiency, patient experience, workforce productivity, service quality, and support responsiveness.

Cybersecurity, Compliance & Risk Management

• Ensure Unified Communications platforms comply with healthcare regulations, cybersecurity standards, privacy requirements, business continuity requirements, and organizational policies.

• Partner with Information Security teams to identify, prioritize, and remediate communication technology vulnerabilities, configuration risks, logging gaps, and lifecycle risks.

• Lead vulnerability management, patch coordination, risk reduction, secure configuration, and operational resiliency programs for telecommunications and Unified Communications environments.

• Ensure secure deployment and ongoing governance of voice, video, messaging, collaboration, contact center, and AI-enabled communication technologies.

• Support compliance activities related to HIPAA, business continuity, disaster recovery, emergency communications, records retention, incident response, and operational risk management.

Technology Lifecycle Management

• Develop, maintain, and manage lifecycle strategies for Unified Communications hardware, software, cloud services, carrier services, collaboration platforms, contact center platforms, and supporting infrastructure assets.

• Establish technology refresh plans, currency standards, upgrade roadmaps, supportability requirements, capacity plans, and modernization programs that reduce operational risk and improve service reliability.

• Manage vendor support agreements, licensing, maintenance contracts, warranties, carrier agreements, renewals, and lifecycle dependencies.

• Ensure communication technologies remain current, secure, reliable, supportable, cost-effective, and aligned with enterprise architecture and organizational standards.

Financial Management

• Support development of multi-year financial plans for Unified Communications modernization, lifecycle management, service reliability, vendor contracts, and technology investments.

• Manage Unified Communications capital and operating budgets, including forecasting, expense tracking, variance review, invoice validation, renewal planning, and cost optimization.

• Develop business cases, ROI analyses, cost models, and recommendations for technology investments that support modernization, resiliency, patient access, operational efficiency, and customer experience objectives.

• Identify cost optimization opportunities through service consolidation, contract management, carrier rationalization, licensing optimization, cloud service management, and technology modernization.

• Manage financial performance of telecommunications, contact center, collaboration, cloud communication, carrier, and managed service provider services.

Vendor & Team Leadership

• Lead, mentor, develop, and guide Unified Communications engineering and operations professionals and supervisors, establishing clear priorities, accountability, service expectations, and development plans.

• Build an operational culture focused on reliability, responsiveness, service ownership, customer experience, documentation, risk reduction, and continuous improvement.

• Establish service delivery standards, operational objectives, performance expectations, escalation practices, workload management routines, and cross-functional collaboration models.

• Manage strategic relationships with telecommunications carriers, cloud communication providers, technology vendors, managed service partners, software providers, and implementation partners.

• Negotiate and manage contracts, licensing agreements, support agreements, renewals, service-level commitments, vendor performance reviews, and remediation plans.

• Ensure vendors consistently meet contractual obligations, service expectations, documentation requirements, operational performance targets, and security obligations.

Qualifications

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Telecommunications, Computer Science, Engineering, Healthcare Technology, or related field required.

• Master’s degree preferred.

• Relevant industry certifications preferred, such as ITIL, PMP, CISSP, CCNP Collaboration, Avaya, Microsoft Teams, cloud communications, contact center, or telecommunications certifications.

Experience

• 7-10+ years of progressive experience in Unified Communications, Telecommunications, Collaboration Services, Contact Center technologies, or related infrastructure leadership roles.

• 5+ years leading enterprise communications engineering and operations teams in large, complex organizations.

• Healthcare industry experience strongly preferred, including experience supporting hospitals, ambulatory sites, clinical operations, patient access functions, emergency communications, and distributed workforces.

• Experience supporting multi-site healthcare systems, hospitals, academic medical centers, or large enterprise environments with high availability and business continuity requirements.

• Proven experience managing capital and operating budgets, vendor contracts, telecom carrier services, software licensing, managed service providers, and modernization funding requests.

• Demonstrated success leading enterprise communication modernization, technology lifecycle management, operational improvement, and technology modernization initiatives.

Technical Expertise

• Avaya Unified Communications and enterprise voice platforms

• Enterprise telephony systems, voicemail, unified messaging, SIP, VoIP, call routing, and session border controllers

• Contact center platforms, reporting, workforce optimization, omnichannel routing, and customer engagement technologies

• Unified Communications as a Service, Contact Center as a Service, cloud communication platforms, and hybrid communication architectures

• Collaboration, video conferencing, messaging, mobility, and digital workplace communication technologies

• Telecommunications carriers, circuits, SIP trunking, number management, billing, contracts, and vendor governance

• Telecommunications security, healthcare compliance, vulnerability management, operational risk management, disaster recovery, and business continuity planning

• Infrastructure lifecycle management, technology roadmaps, service management, operational metrics, support models, and documentation practices

• AI-enabled communications, virtual assistants, transcription, analytics, automation, and governance for emerging communication technologies

Leadership Competencies

• Technology Leadership

• Operational Leadership and Service Delivery

• Executive Communication and Stakeholder Management

• Clinical and Operations Partnership

• Financial and Budget Management

• Technology Modernization Leadership

• Customer and Patient Experience Focus

• Innovation and Emerging Technology Adoption

• Vendor and Contract Negotiation

• Organizational Change Management

• Operational Excellence

• Team Development and Leadership

• Risk Management and Decision Making

Success Measures

• Unified Communications platform availability, reliability, resiliency, and operational performance

• Delivery of Unified Communications roadmap milestones, lifecycle initiatives, service improvements, and modernization outcomes

• Contact center service levels, customer satisfaction, patient access experience, call quality, and reporting maturity

• Collaboration platform adoption, user satisfaction, support responsiveness, and workforce communication experience

• Budget performance, forecast accuracy, cost optimization outcomes, contract effectiveness, and vendor performance

• Security, compliance, vulnerability remediation, disaster recovery readiness, and business continuity outcomes

• AI-enabled communication adoption, operational value, governance maturity, and measurable business impact

• Patient, clinician, employee, and operational stakeholder communication experience

• Team capability, service ownership, documentation quality, and continuous improvement maturity

Role Impact

This role serves as the senior operational leader responsible for delivering secure, resilient, reliable, scalable, and modern communication services that support exceptional patient care, clinical responsiveness, workforce collaboration, customer experience, and business operations across the healthcare enterprise.

Non-Discrimination Policy Hospital for Special Surgery is committed to providing high quality care and skilled, compassionate, reliable service to our community in a safe and healing environment. Consistent with this commitment, Hospital for Special Surgery provides care, admits, and treats patients and provides all services without regard to age, race, color, creed, ethnicity, religion, national origin, culture, language, physical or mental disability, socioeconomic status, veteran or military status, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other basis prohibited by federal, state, or local law or by accreditation standards.