Senior Data Scientist

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 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. 

 

Optum’s Payment Integrity Decision Intelligence is seeking a Senior Data Scientist to help drive our mission of driving efficiency and Medical Cost Savings growth within Payment Integrity operations via AI/ML tooling, detection, inventory prioritisation and orchestration.

 

We are looking for a disciplined, self-motivated professional with expertise in large language models (LLMs), predictive modeling, and healthcare data analytics. The ideal candidate will have a solid portfolio of projects and a passion for solving complex problems using data, with AI/ML experience in Payment Integrity a solid advantage.

 

The successful candidate will undertake complex projects. A solid threshold of data science competence is required. The projects will involve working directly with business stakeholders to achieve tangible and significant business value.

 

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

 

Primary Responsibilities:

• Apply advanced statistical and predictive modeling techniques to design, develop and deploy machine learning models into production, employing state-of-the-art libraries, and adhering to the organization’s established processes for transitioning from development to production environments
• Lead discovery processes with Data Scientists and partner with Payment Integrity Operation management to identify the business requirements and the expected outcome
• Create and provide sound statistical analyses and frame business scenarios that are meaningful and which impact on critical business processes and/or decisions
• Collaborates with the data steward to gather information to be used for analytics and predictive model building purpose and to ensure the data meets the qualification and assurance requirements of the analyses
• Design sampling methodology, prepare data, including data cleaning, univariate analysis, missing value imputation, etc., identify appropriate analytic and statistical methodology, develop predictive models and document process and results
• Communicate analytics results and predictive models to business partners and clients
• Provide on-going tracking and monitoring of model performance and recommend ongoing improvements to methods and algorithms that lead to findings, including new information

 

You will 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 providing development for other roles you may be interested in.

Required Qualifications:

• Advanced degree in Applied Mathematics, Physics, Computer Science, Statistics, or related technical field
• Proven solid experience in programming languages e.g. Python/R and SQL
• Proven extensive experience in data analysis, statistical modelling, and machine learning
• Proven extensive experience manipulating large datasets
• Proven solid experience leading complex data science projects with a cross-functional team, and developing and deploying machine learning models in production environments
• Demonstrated experience in communicating complex technical results to non-technical audience and stakeholders 
• Proven experience with distributed computing technologies such as Spark
• Proven experience with Git / GitHub for version control
• Proven experience working with business stakeholders to achieve tangible business value

 

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master’s Degree or higher in Applied Mathematics, Physics, Computer Science, Statistics, Data Science or related technical field

 

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.  

 

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.

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. © 2026 Optum Services (Ireland) Limited. All rights reserved.