The Role
Lead AI-first engineering strategy and teams to design, build, and operate enterprise AI and cloud-native solutions on Azure. Drive adoption of Generative AI, Agentic AI, RAG, vector DBs, Databricks/Spark, MLOps/LLMOps, IaC, and CI/CD. Establish governance, responsible AI, observability, and partnerships to deliver measurable business and clinical outcomes while mentoring engineering leadership and overseeing large-scale digital transformation.
Summary Generated by Built In
Requisition Number: 2373373
Optum is a global organization that delivers care, aided by technology to help millions of people live healthier lives. The work you do with our team will directly improve health outcomes by connecting people with the care, pharmacy benefits, data and resources they need to feel their best. Here, you will find a culture guided by inclusion, talented peers, comprehensive benefits and career development opportunities. Come make an impact on the communities we serve as you help us advance health optimization on a global scale. Join us to start Caring. Connecting. Growing together.
Primary Responsibilities:
Required Qualifications:
Preferred Qualification:
At UnitedHealth Group, our mission is to help people live healthier lives and make the health system work better for everyone. We believe everyone-of every race, gender, sexuality, age, location and income-deserves the opportunity to live their healthiest life. Today, however, there are still far too many barriers to good health which are disproportionately experienced by people of color, historically marginalized groups and those with lower incomes. We are committed to mitigating our impact on the environment and enabling and delivering equitable care that addresses health disparities and improves health outcomes - an enterprise priority reflected in our mission.
Optum is a global organization that delivers care, aided by technology to help millions of people live healthier lives. The work you do with our team will directly improve health outcomes by connecting people with the care, pharmacy benefits, data and resources they need to feel their best. Here, you will find a culture guided by inclusion, talented peers, comprehensive benefits and career development opportunities. Come make an impact on the communities we serve as you help us advance health optimization on a global scale. Join us to start Caring. Connecting. Growing together.
Primary Responsibilities:
- As an AI-First Technical Leader
- Define and drive the organization's AI-first engineering vision, embedding Generative AI, Agentic AI, and intelligent automation into engineering practices, products, and business processes
- Lead the design and implementation of scalable AI-powered solutions leveraging Azure AI Foundry, GPT models, Agentic AI frameworks, RAG architectures, vector databases, knowledge graphs, and enterprise data platforms
- Establish engineering standards for AI application development, including model evaluation, prompt engineering, observability, guardrails, governance, responsible AI, and security
- Architect and deliver secure, resilient, cloud-native solutions on Azure using IaaS, PaaS, containerized, serverless, and AI-native architectures
- Stay at the forefront of advancements in Generative AI, Large Language Models (LLMs), multimodal AI, Agentic AI, MLOps, Data Engineering, and Cloud technologies, translating innovations into business value
- Ensure system architectures support scalability, data quality, explainability, compliance, and responsible use of AI while aligning with long-term technology strategy
- As an AI-First People Leader
- Build and nurture high-performing engineering teams capable of designing, developing, and operating AI-powered products and platforms
- Mentor engineers, architects, and leaders in AI engineering practices, cloud architectures, data platforms, and modern software engineering
- Foster a culture of continuous learning, experimentation, innovation, and AI adoption across the engineering organization
- Enable teams to leverage AI as a productivity multiplier by integrating AI-powered workflows into software development, testing, operations, and analytics
- Develop future AI leadership talent and partner with management to build organizational capabilities in AI, Data, and Cloud technologies
- Lead organizational change management initiatives that accelerate AI adoption while ensuring employee engagement and skill development
- As an AI-First Strategic Leader
- Partner closely with Product, Data Science, Clinical, Business, and Engineering leaders to define and execute an enterprise AI strategy aligned with business objectives
- Drive the identification, prioritization, and delivery of AI use cases that unlock measurable business value, customer outcomes, operational efficiencies, and innovation
- Influence technology roadmaps across multiple organizations, ensuring alignment with AI-first architecture principles and enterprise modernization strategies
- Establish governance, compliance, risk management, and responsible AI frameworks for enterprise AI adoption
- Build strategic partnerships with Microsoft, OpenAI, and other technology providers to accelerate innovation and enterprise AI capabilities
- Contribute to the organization's intellectual property through AI-driven innovations, patents, reusable frameworks, accelerators, and differentiated solutions
- Define and track AI adoption, productivity, quality, and business outcome metrics to demonstrate measurable impact from AI investments
- Comply with the terms and conditions of the employment contract, company policies and procedures, and any and all directives (such as, but not limited to, transfer and/or re-assignment to different work locations, change in teams and/or work shifts, policies in regards to flexibility of work benefits and/or work environment, alternative work arrangements, and other decisions that may arise due to the changing business environment). The Company may adopt, vary or rescind these policies and directives in its absolute discretion and without any limitation (implied or otherwise) on its ability to do so
Required Qualifications:
- Education
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, or a related field
- Professional experience
- 15+ years of software engineering experience with 5+ years leading engineering organizations
- Proven experience driving large-scale digital transformation initiatives
- Demonstrated success leading AI-first engineering, data, or platform organizations
- Experience building and scaling enterprise AI and cloud-native solutions
- AI & Data expertise
- Hands-on experience implementing enterprise AI solutions
- Solid experience building AI-powered products, copilots, intelligent workflows, and agent-based systems
- Deep expertise in data engineering, analytics, ETL/ELT pipelines, Databricks, Spark, and modern data platforms
- Proven technical skills
- AI Engineering & Generative AI
- Designing and deploying production-grade AI applications
- LLM orchestration and prompt engineering
- RAG and Agentic AI architectures
- AI model evaluation, testing, monitoring, and governance
- Responsible AI, security, privacy, and regulatory compliance
- AI observability and operational excellence
- AI Engineering & Generative AI
- Cloud & Platform Engineering
- Deep expertise in Microsoft Azure ecosystem
- Data & Analytics
- Data platforms and lakehouse architecture
- Databricks and Spark engineering
- Real-time and batch data processing
- Data governance and quality frameworks
- Advanced analytics and decision intelligence
- DevOps, MLOps & LLMOps
- CI/CD for AI and data platforms
- Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, Jenkins
- Infrastructure as Code using Terraform and ARM/Bicep
- Containerization using Docker and Kubernetes
- MLOps and LLMOps frameworks for model lifecycle management
Preferred Qualification:
- Proven technical skills
- Cloud & Platform Engineering
- Experience with AWS and GCP AI services
- Cloud & Platform Engineering
At UnitedHealth Group, our mission is to help people live healthier lives and make the health system work better for everyone. We believe everyone-of every race, gender, sexuality, age, location and income-deserves the opportunity to live their healthiest life. Today, however, there are still far too many barriers to good health which are disproportionately experienced by people of color, historically marginalized groups and those with lower incomes. We are committed to mitigating our impact on the environment and enabling and delivering equitable care that addresses health disparities and improves health outcomes - an enterprise priority reflected in our mission.
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, or related field
- 15+ years of software engineering experience with 5+ years leading engineering organizations
- Proven experience driving large-scale digital transformation initiatives
- Demonstrated success leading AI-first engineering, data, or platform organizations
- Experience building and scaling enterprise AI and cloud-native solutions
- Hands-on experience implementing enterprise AI solutions (Generative AI, LLMs, copilots, agent-based systems)
- Experience with RAG architectures, LLM orchestration, prompt engineering, model evaluation, testing, monitoring, and governance
- Deep expertise in data engineering, analytics, ETL/ELT pipelines, Databricks, and Spark
- Expertise in data platforms, lakehouse architecture, real-time and batch processing, data governance and quality
- Deep expertise in the Microsoft Azure ecosystem and building secure, resilient cloud-native solutions
- Experience with CI/CD for AI and data platforms and DevOps tools (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, Jenkins)
- Infrastructure as Code experience using Terraform and ARM/Bicep
- Containerization and orchestration experience with Docker and Kubernetes
- Experience with MLOps and LLMOps frameworks for model lifecycle management
- Experience with responsible AI, security, privacy, regulatory compliance, and AI observability
- Experience building AI-powered products, copilots, intelligent workflows, and agent-based systems
- Preferred: Experience with AWS and GCP AI services
Optum Compensation & Benefits Highlights
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — PTO accrues each pay period with eight paid U.S. holidays plus a floating holiday, and generous time away is consistently emphasized. This breadth supports planned and unplanned time off beyond standard vacation days.
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Parental & Family Support — Six weeks of paid parental leave, up to two weeks of paid caregiver leave, Bright Horizons back‑up care, and adoption assistance signal strong family-oriented support. EAP access with counseling sessions further extends help to employees and their households.
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Wellbeing & Lifestyle Benefits — Company‑paid short‑ and long‑term disability, Calm app membership, tuition reimbursement, commuter and FSA accounts, and broad employee discounts expand everyday wellbeing resources. Free or low‑cost virtual visits complement these lifestyle supports.
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The Company
What We Do
Optum, part of the UnitedHealth Group family of businesses, is a global organization that delivers care, aided by technology to help millions of people live healthier lives. The work you do with our team will directly improve health outcomes by connecting people with the care, pharmacy benefits, data and resources they need to feel their best. Here, you will find a culture guided by inclusion, talented peers, comprehensive benefits and career development opportunities. Come make an impact on the communities we serve as you help us advance health optimization on a global scale. Join us to start Caring. Connecting. Growing together. At Optum, we support your well-being with an understanding team, extensive benefits and rewarding opportunities. By joining us, you’ll have the resources to drive system transformation while we help you take care of your future. We recognize the power of connection to drive change, improve efficiency and make a difference in health care. Join a team where your skills and ideas can make an impact and where collaboration is key to creating technology that produces healthier outcomes.
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Optum Offices
Hybrid Workspace
Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
Optum has three workplace models that balance the needs of the business and the responsibilities of each role. These models, core on‑site (5 days/week), hybrid (4 days/week) and telecommute or fully remote, vary by country, role and location.
Typical time on-site:
Not Specified
