Senior Software Engineering Lead - Python and VMware

Requisition Number: 2369234
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.
Join the Image Factory team at Optum Technology, where we build and maintain the foundational automated infrastructure enabling our global services. As a Senior Software Engineer II, you will design, build, and optimize template automation within our homegrown application, which builds secure, highly reliable VMware virtual machine templates across both Linux and Windows environments. In this role, you will lead efforts to proactively resolve infrastructure vulnerabilities, drive continuous deployment of templates, and integrate modern engineering tools to achieve unparalleled development speed and quality. This is an excellent opportunity for an experienced automation engineer to innovate at scale and directly impact our virtualization capabilities.
Primary Responsibilities:

• Design, develop, and update sophisticated automation workflows within our homegrown application to build VMware virtual machine templates (both Linux/RHEL and Windows) used across the enterprise
• Use enterprise-approved AI tools to streamline workflows, automate tasks, and drive continuous improvement
• Evaluate emerging trends to inform solution design and strategic innovation
• Troubleshoot complex automation failures and infrastructure issues, ensuring high availability and seamless virtual machine build processes
• Conduct proactive vulnerability assessments and apply security patches and configurations to Windows and Linux templates as vulnerabilities arise
• Orchestrate automated workflows and build pipelines utilizing Packer, GitHub, and GitHub Actions
• Mentor junior engineers, contribute to architectural reviews, and champion clean code and modern infrastructure-as-code (IaC) engineering principles
• 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:

• 5+ years of experience in software development, scripting, or infrastructure automation engineering
• 3+ years of experience scripting and building robust automation programs with Python
• 3+ years of hands-on experience working with VMware vCenter administration, orchestration, and template virtualization
• 2+ years of hands-on experience utilizing Packer to author, build, and configure virtual machine images
• 2+ years of experience building and maintaining continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines with GitHub and GitHub Actions
• Solid experience configuring, securing, and maintaining Linux (RHEL) and Windows operating systems

Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience)
• Experience leveraging modern AI productivity assistants, code generators, or developer tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot) to accelerate scripting, debugging, and testing efficiency
• Experience with configuration management tools such as Chef
• Experience or familiarity with cloud platforms and services (e.g., Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, or Google Cloud Platform)
• Proven solid troubleshooting, problem-solving, and system vulnerability remediation capabilities

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.