Principal Architect - Remote

Requisition Number: 2339890
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.
Optum is seeking a visionary Digital AI architect for our Contract Center Transformation. The successful candidate will play a critical role in transforming our voice and digital experiences to conversational experiences, through multiple engagement channels (including web, app, chat, voice, and search), with a particular emphasis on transforming how consumers engage in the US health care system. In this role you will help make UnitedHealth Group's consumer obsessed digital vision come to life by using AI to deliver our next generation Conversational Experiences. Define and lead the strategic vision, architecture, and implementation of AI contact solutions across our consumer-facing digital experiences. Partner closely with business and product teams to identify and prioritize strategic opportunities for leveraging AI within web, mobile, chat messaging, voice messaging, and search channels. Oversee the development of scalable, secure, and innovative AI solutions designed to enhance consumer engagement and deliver personalized, intuitive self-service experiences that transform our current digital experiences into conversational experiences.
You'll enjoy the flexibility to work remotely * from anywhere within the U.S. as you take on some tough challenges.
Primary Responsibilities:

• Own the end-to-end voice solution architecture for Amazon Connect, including IVR/contact flows, prompts (TTS/SSML), routing strategy, queues, routing profiles, hours of operation, and contact attributes
• Design and deliver integrations between Amazon Connect and enterprise systems (CRM/case management, customer data, identity)
• Build and optimize self-service voice experiences including graceful fallback to DTMF, agent transfer, and error handling
• Implement speech analytics and quality insights enabling actionable reporting and continuous improvement of customer experience and agent performance
• Define and socialize reference architectures, standards, and reusable patterns for Connect implementations (flow modularization, logging/tracing, resilience patterns, data handling)
• Establish infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD approaches for Amazon Connect and dependent AWS resources (versioning, environment promotion, safe rollout/rollback practices)
• Partner with Product, Engineering, Security, and Contact Center Operations to translate business outcomes into technical designs, estimates, and delivery plans; lead design reviews and influence decisions as a hands-on IC
• Ensure solutions meet security, privacy, and compliance needs (least-privilege access, encryption, PII handling/redaction where applicable, call recording governance, auditability)
• Drive operational readiness (monitoring/alerting, dashboards, runbooks, capacity planning, incident response support) to ensure stable 24x7 voice experiences where required
• Continuously evaluate and adopt new Amazon Connect capabilities and best practices to improve reliability, maintainability, cost, and customer outcomes

You'll be rewarded and recognized for your performance in an environment that will challenge you and give you clear direction on what it takes to succeed in your role as well as provide development for other roles you may be interested in.
Required Qualifications:

• 5+ years of experience designing and delivering contact center / IVR / voice solutions in production environments
• 3+ years of hands-on experience implementing Amazon Connect voice (contact flows, routing, queues, metrics/monitoring, agent experience fundamentals) with at least one end-to-end rollout and major enhancement program
• 3+ years of experience with telephony fundamentals (PSTN concepts, number provisioning/porting, call routing, SIP concepts, carrier considerations)
• Experience designing conversational/self-service experiences using Amazon Lex or equivalent for voice interactions, including fallback and escalation design
• Experience with AI in engineering workflows (standards, guardrails, reusable prompts/patterns, evaluation/quality checks) and using it to accelerate modernization roadmaps and improve developer productivity without compromising quality
• Ability to run technical workshops, produce architecture/design artifacts, mentor engineers, and influence cross-functional stakeholders
• Solid troubleshooting mindset with demonstrated ownership of production support and root cause analysis

Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent practical experience)
• Hands-on experience with Amazon Connect Contact Lens (categories, analytics workflows, redaction/governance considerations)
• Experience embedding the Amazon Connect CCP/agent experiences into custom applications (e.g., screen-pop/CTI patterns, Connect Streams)
• Experience with data pipelines for contact center reporting (e.g., working with contact trace records, recordings/transcripts storage, analytics/reporting platforms)
• Experience implementing infrastructure-as-code with CDK / CloudFormation / Terraform and CI/CD pipelines for cloud platform delivery
• Experience operating in regulated or high-compliance environments and designing for privacy-by-default (PII minimization, encryption, audit logging)
• Ability to architect cross-channel experiences that minimize customer effort, building consistent UX and operational workflows across chat, human-assisted chat, and voice, with unified routing, reporting, and quality insights
• Proven excellent communication skills. Able to translate between contact center operations needs and engineering implementation details

*All employees working remotely will be required to adhere to UnitedHealth Group's Telecommuter Policy
Pay is based on several factors including but not limited to local labor markets, education, work experience, certifications, etc. In addition to your salary, we offer benefits such as, a comprehensive benefits package, incentive and recognition programs, equity stock purchase and 401k contribution (all benefits are subject to eligibility requirements). No matter where or when you begin a career with us, you'll find a far-reaching choice of benefits and incentives. The salary for this role will range from $134,600 to $230,800 annually based on full-time employment. We comply with all minimum wage laws as applicable.
Application Deadline: This will be posted for a minimum of 2 business days or until a sufficient candidate pool has been collected. Job posting may come down early due to volume of applicants.
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.
UnitedHealth Group is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer under applicable law and qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, national origin, religion, age, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by local, state, or federal laws, rules, or regulations.
UnitedHealth Group is a drug-free workplace. Candidates are required to pass a drug test before beginning employment.