Lightwave Dental was founded in 2016, is a high-growth company building the group model for the future of the dental industry. Lightwave is passionate about doing things the right way with a tight focus on high quality, core values, and taking care of their people. Lightwave is a dental leadership organization that focuses on partnering, training and developing dentists as the natural leaders of the dental practice. Lightwave helps dentists launch their careers, supports dentists leading high-growth dental groups, and assists doctors looking to establish their legacy as they transition into retirement. Lightwave is solving the big problems in dentistry: retirement, management, reimbursements, and partnership by providing the benefits of a group while preserving the essence of private practice. Lightwave currently supports over 100 dental offices in 3 states. For additional information, please visit lightwavedental.com. Follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
Location: Remote or hybrid, with travel to practices for conversion waves and go-lives. Occasional early, evening, or weekend hours to support cutovers and updates outside patient hours.
Position Summary
The Practice Management Systems Administrator is the single accountable owner of Lightwave’s Open Dental environment: how it is configured, how it is updated, who has access to it, and how the applications connected to it are governed. The position was established as an output of the 2026 enterprise IT assessment, which identified practice management system ownership as a foundational gap.
The first mandate of the role is the Open Dental standardization project. Open Dental runs today as roughly 55 to 60 separate practice databases with inconsistent configuration. The project brings those instances onto a common Lightwave configuration standard, a controlled release process, and a supportable integration footprint, practice by practice, through 2027. This person owns the configuration and data work inside that project, working with the Enterprise Program Office project manager who owns the overall plan, and carries the ownership forward once the standard is in place.
This is a hands-on role. It combines system administration, data quality, and practice-level execution and requires someone who understands how a dental practice runs and how configuration decisions show up in scheduling, billing, provider compensation, and reporting. Responsibilities will evolve as the standardization project matures and clinical application ownership moves into I
Key Responsibilities
Open Dental standardization project
- Execute the configuration and data work for the project: build and maintain the current-state configuration inventory across all instances, document the gap to the Lightwave standard for each practice, and execute the remediation.
- Execute each practice wave, including configuration changes, data cleanup, conversion validation, cutover, and go-live support, coordinating with practice leaders, regional operations, and the Revenue Cycle team.
- Work within the project structure run by the Enterprise Program Office: keep workstream tasks current in Wrike and provide status, risks, and issues to the project manager for steering committee reporting.
- Flag sequencing conflicts with related initiatives (patient engagement tools, imaging, eServices, reporting) so changes land in the right order and practices are not disrupted twice.
System administration
- Define, document, and maintain the Lightwave configuration standard for fee schedules, procedure codes, providers, security groups and permissions, scheduling, and clinical templates. As the standard is established, review and control deviations from it.
- Own the release and update process: review Open Dental release notes, assess impact, test in a pilot environment, and coordinate version alignment across all instances so central billing and remote access continue to work.
- Administer user accounts, roles, and permissions through the central management tool, aligned with Lightwave’s identity and HR-driven provisioning process. Support onboarding and offboarding of practice staff.
- Act as an escalation point for Open Dental issues from the help desk, Revenue Cycle, and practices. Work tickets in Freshservice, identify root causes, and fix configuration problems at the source rather than one practice at a time.
Integrations and vendors
- Maintain the inventory of applications connected to Open Dental (patient communication, payments, eligibility, collections, imaging, analytics) and their configuration touchpoints. Vet new integration requests before they connect to production.
- Manage support cases, conversion requests, and reconversions with Open Dental and coordinate with third-party vendors on integration issues.
Training, adoption, and documentation
- Partner with Revenue Cycle trainers and Learning and Development to build training content, deliver sessions for configuration changes, and confirm new workflows are adopted in the practices.
- Maintain configuration standards, runbooks, change logs, and knowledge base articles so the environment is supportable by the wider team and not dependent on one person.
Data quality and reporting
- Maintain master data in Open Dental (fee schedules, procedure codes, providers, insurance carriers and plans, clinic and operatory setup) so it stays consistent across instances as the standard is established.
- Validate data after every conversion, merge, and upgrade: patient records and IDs, balances, appointments, insurance, and image links reconciled to the source before go-live sign-off.
- Identify configuration and data issues that cause errors in reporting, provider compensation, or billing, and drive the fixes with Revenue Cycle and Finance.
- Support Finance and operations with data questions and report validation and help ensure the data coming out of Open Dental is consistent across practices.
- Track and report a small set of data quality measures (for example, practices on standard configuration, instances on the aligned version, open configuration defects) as the project progresses.
Qualifications
Required
- Three or more years of hands-on Open Dental administration or advanced practice-level configuration experience.
- Experience leading or coordinating practice management system conversions, migrations, or multi-site rollouts in a dental or healthcare environment.
- Working knowledge of dental office operations, scheduling, fee schedules, insurance, and the revenue cycle, and how each depends on system configuration.
- Demonstrated ability to manage a project plan, communicate status clearly, and hold others to dates across departments.
- Comfortable working with data: running and reading reports, exporting and validating records across systems, and reconciling before and after a conversion.
- Strong troubleshooting and documentation skills; comfortable working from tickets and closing the loop with end users.
- Understanding of HIPAA and the handling of protected health information.
Preferred
- Experience in a multi-site DSO or group practice environment with 20 or more locations.
- Familiarity with Open Dental eServices, central management tooling, and bridge or API integrations.
- Basic SQL or experience with Open Dental query and reporting tools.
- Experience delivering end-user training and building learning content.
- Exposure to project tracking (Wrike) and ticketing (Freshservice) tools.
- Project management coursework or certification (CAPM, PMP, or equivalent).
Working Model and Compensation
The role is remote or hybrid with travel to practices during conversion waves and go-lives. The expectation is someone who knows the practices firsthand, not someone who administers the system from a distance alone.
In return for providing an excellent employee and patient experience, we offer a great benefits package to include health and dental benefits, 401(k), holiday pay and paid time off.
3+ years hands-on Open Dental administration or advanced configuration; experience leading PMS conversions or multi-site rollouts; knowledge of dental operations and revenue cycle; project management skills; data analysis; HIPAA understanding; travel to practices for go-lives.
Key Responsibilities
- administering Open Dental
- executing standardization projects
- managing integrations
Skills & Tools
Open Dental, Wrike, Freshservice, SQL
Job Details
- Category: Information Technology
- Seniority: Mid Level
- Commitment: Full Time
- Workplace: Remote — United States
- Salary: USD 85,000 – 105,000 / year
- Languages: English
Benefits
- Generous paid time off
- Retirement plan
About Lightwave Dental
A dental leadership organization that partners with dentists to launch careers, support high-growth groups, and establish legacies. — Industry: Healthcare