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 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:

• Architecture & Standards:
  • Design end-to-end AI/ML architectures aligned to business and technical goals
  • Develop, maintain, and enforce AI/ML architecture guidelines, standards, and comprehensive review checklists
  • Keep documentation current and ensure all AI projects align with established architecture best practices and compliance requirements
• Governance & Review:
  • Proactively review and assess AI solution architectures across projects
  • Provide actionable feedback, coaching, and guidance to teams implementing AI/ML solutions
  • Approve solution designs and ensure adherence to architecture standards before implementation
• Innovation & Prototyping:
  • Stay abreast of emerging advancements in AI and machine learning, evaluating their potential through hands-on development
  • Build rapid prototypes, proof-of-concepts, and accelerators to assess and demonstrate new technologies or approaches
  • Publish point-of-view papers, technical blogs, and thought leadership content to guide internal and external stakeholders
• Collaboration:
  • Work closely with product managers, data scientists, engineers, and other business stakeholders to drive the development and deployment of AI solutions
• Employ AI and/or ML that may include natural language processing (NLP), natural language understanding (NLU), semantic understanding, intent classification, computer vision, deep learning, and automatic speech recognition (ASR). Apply deep learning technologies to give computers the capability to visualize, learn and respond to complex situations. May adapt machine learning to areas such as artificial intelligence, robotics and other products that allow users to have an interactive experience
• Drive end-to-end ML and DL projects
• 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:

• Bachelors Degree
• 3+ years of experience with Python, classical ML methods and deep learning, including deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch or Tensorflow
• Experience with LLM frameworks and/or NLP approaches such as text embedding and text classification
• Experience with cloud AI platforms (AWS SageMaker, Azure ML, Google AI Platform) and MLOps tools
• Knowledge of Large Language Models (LLMs) for text and conversational applications 
• Solid knowledge of data engineering and data pipelines
• Understanding of data privacy, security, and ethics in AI system design
• Familiarity with data cleaning, feature engineering, and model evaluation best practices 
• Exposure working with GenAI and LLM
• Proficiency in Python, including libraries like pandas, NumPy, and scikit-learn
• Proven track record architecting and deploying AI-driven applications at scale
• Proven ability to design, develop, and implement machine learning models and algorithms to solve complex healthcare problems.
• Proven ability to design and implement AI/ML solutions using Python, along with libraries like pandas, NumPy, and SQL for data handling
• Proven ability to build and deploy models using frameworks such as Scikit-learn, TensorFlow, and PyTorch
• Proven ability to perform exploratory data analysis (EDA), statistical analysis, and feature engineering to extract meaningful insights from data
• Proven ability to develop, tune, and evaluate machine learning models for both predictive and prescriptive analytics
• Proven ability to build, train, and optimize machine learning models for production 
• Proven excellent analytical thinking and communication skills for cross-functional collaboration

Preferred Qualifications:

• Hands-on experience with deep learning frameworks (TensorFlow/PyTorch) 
• Experience using cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure) for scalable deployments 
• Exposure to Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) methodologies and AI Agents

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.