Lead AI/ML Engineer

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:

• Own end-to-end AI/ML development for GICS (Global Infrastructure and Cloud Services)  initiatives, spanning problem formulation, data exploration, model selection, training, evaluation, deployment, and monitoring in production
• Design and evaluate machine learning models using rigorous statistical and ML metrics (e.g., precision/recall, F1 score, ROC AUC), ensuring models are fit for business-critical workflows,
• Develop and operationalize LLM-based systems with a strong understanding of model behavior, limitations, hallucination risk, bias, fairness, and explainability-beyond simple prompt engineering
• Assess and mitigate bias, fairness, and ethical risks in ML and LLM solutions, aligning with Responsible AI principles and enterprise governance expectations
• Build production-quality AI services and pipelines, leveraging strong software engineering fundamentals (Python, APIs, microservices, data pipelines, model serving, CI/CD)
• Translate research and experimentation into scalable solutions, balancing experimental rigor with real-world performance, reliability, and maintainability
• Partner with architects, product managers, and platform teams to ensure AI solutions integrate cleanly with enterprise systems (data platforms, observability, security, and APIs)
• Lead technical design decisions for AI/ML components, serving as a subject matter expert and reviewer for model choices, evaluation approaches, and implementation quality
• Monitor and improve models post-deployment, establishing feedback loops, retraining strategies, performance dashboards, and drift detection where appropriate
• Mentor other engineers and data scientists across CIOP AI by setting high technical standards, reviewing work, and promoting best practices in ML engineering and Responsible AI
• 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:

• Master's degree in Data Science, Computer Science, or related field; PhD preferred
• 8+ years of experience in AI/ML engineering, including model development and deployment
• Hands-on experience building, evaluating, and deploying ML models in production, with clear understanding of evaluation metrics such as precision, recall, F1 score, and tradeoffs between them
• Experience with building Agentic AI application, using frameworks such as Langchain, Langgraph and autogen
• Deep foundation in machine learning and data science, including statistics, probability, optimization, and modern ML techniques (supervised, unsupervised, deep learning)
• Proven expertise with LLMs and NLP systems, including model behavior analysis, bias/fairness considerations, and techniques to improve reliability and accuracy beyond prompt tuning
• Solid software engineering skills, including ability to build APIs, services, and data pipelines programmatically to support production AI systems at scale
• Demonstrated ability to operate as a senior individual contributor, owning complex problems, influencing technical direction, and translating advanced AI concepts for stakeholders

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.