Director Software Engineering

Optum is a global organisation 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 diversity and inclusion, talented peers, comprehensive benefits and career development opportunities. Come make an impact on the communities we serve as you help us advance health equity on a global scale. Join us to start Caring. Connecting. Growing together. 

About the role

At UnitedHealth Group and Optum, we want to make healthcare work better for everyone. This depends on hiring the best and brightest. With a thriving ecosystem of investment and innovation, our business in Ireland is constantly growing to support the healthcare needs of the future. Our teams are at the forefront of building and adapting the latest technologies to propel healthcare forward in a way that better serves everyone. With our hands at work across all aspects of health, we use the most advanced development tools, AI, data science and innovative approaches to make the healthcare system work better for everyone. 

Todays’ RCM is inherently complex due to opaque and payer-specific adjudication rules, incurring significant waste and inefficiency. Optum Insight is committed to delivering new technology and processes to improve the Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) workflow using advances in Gen AI and other state-of-the-art technology that would ultimately benefit all stakeholders involved in the healthcare ecosystem — payers, providers, and patients.

As a Director of Software Engineering you will take ownership over all primary development activity across all technology functions to ensure we deliver code with high quality across all of our applications, products and services. Within the role you will develop product roadmaps, understanding the customer requirements in the process.

Careers with Optum offer flexible work arrangement and individuals who live and work in the Republic of Ireland will have the opportunity to split their monthly work hours between our Dublin or Letterkenny office and telecommuting from a home-based office.  

Primary Responsibilities

• Facilitate delivery in a cross-functional team of software engineers, Data Scientists, and AI Engineers
• Coordinate efficient and effective agile delivery processes and contribute to operational enhancement
• Collaborate with delivery team and business stakeholders to design robust and reusable solutions, as well as facilitate the translation to technical design
• Estimate delivery effort, as well as effectively identify and prioritize high-value deliverables
• Assist in story definition, evaluation, translation, and business requirements gathering from product owners and business stakeholders
• Communicate effectively with peers and subordinates to support efficient team delivery
• Collaborate in continuous planning with business stakeholders and other technology team leaders to ensure a successful delivery plan is available for business priorities
• Provide leadership & mentor diverse teams across multiple locations
• Demonstrate leadership in the context of software engineering and be an evangelist for engineering best practices
• Encourage the growth of direct and indirect reports through skills development, objectives and goal setting; Holds direct reports accountable for meeting performance standards and departmental performance goals; supports and mentors staff; measures staff performance and completes regular performance reviews and ranking

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:

• Bachelor’s Degree in a relevant discipline (i.e. mathematics, physics, computer science, engineering, economics) or relevant work experience
• Demonstrated ability to own and lead projects that deliver real business value (e.g., revenue generating &/or cost minimizing)
• Experience managing multiple engineering teams and direct reports including leading management tier
• Hands-on experience with a focus on engineering maturity, CI/CD and delivering software into production within an agile environment
• Ability to work a portion of monthly work  from our central Dublin office

 Preferred Qualifications:

• MSc/PhD in mathematics, physics, computer science, engineering, statistics, economics or similar numerical degree
• Experience and understanding of US healthcare system, billing of medical claims and associated data environments
• Experience within AI/ML or Data Science space, including creating machine learning solutions to solve complex issues
• Demonstrable success within a data science environment focused on agile thinking and innovative solutions, delivering complex and challenging projects
• Experience applying computational algorithms, statistical and programming methods (using R &/or Python) to structured and unstructured data
• Practical experience in designing and building highly distributed, scalable systems/ solutions hosted within key major public and/ or Private cloud providers e.g. Azure, AWS, Google Cloud
• Proven past success in creating a ‘start up mentality’ to accelerate the introduction of new capabilities and transform team
• Pharmaceuticals and healthcare experience 

Please note you must currently be eligible to work and remain indefinitely without any restrictions in the country to which you are making an application. Proof will be required to support your application.

 All telecommuters will be required to adhere to the UnitedHealth Group’s Telecommuter Policy.

 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 marginalised 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.

Diversity creates a healthier atmosphere: Optum is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to gender, civil status, family status, sexual orientation, disability, religion, age, race, and membership of the Traveller community, or any other characteristic protected by law. Optum is a drug-free workplace. © 2024 Optum Services (Ireland) Limited. All rights reserved.