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.

Optum AI is UnitedHealth Group’s enterprise AI team. We are AI/ML scientists and engineers with deep expertise in AI/ML engineering for health care. We develop AI/ML solutions for the highest impact opportunities across UnitedHealth Group businesses including UnitedHealthcare, Optum Financial, Optum Health, Optum Insight, and Optum Rx. In addition to transforming the health care journey through responsible AI/ML innovation, our charter also includes developing and supporting an enterprise AI/ML development platform.

Optum AI team members:

• Have impact at scale: We have the data and resources to make an impact at scale. When our solutions are deployed, they have the potential to make health care system work better for everyone
• Do ground-breaking work: Many of our current projects involve cutting edge ML, NLP and LLM techniques. Generative AI methods for working with structured and unstructured health care data are continuously being developed and improved. We are working in one of the most important frontiers of AI/ML research and development
• Partner with world-class experts on innovative solutions: Our team members are developing novel AI/ML solutions to business challenges. In some cases, this includes the opportunity to file patents and publish papers about the methods we develop. We also collaborate with AI/ML researchers at some of the world’s top universities

United AI Studio (UAIS) is an end-to-end platform that enables AI/ML practitioners to build, deploy, manage and scale machine learning (ML) and AI applications responsibly

We are looking for passionate AI/ML Engineers who can bridge the gap between cutting-edge AI/ML technologies and real-world customer use cases. You will work closely with customers to understand their AI/ML challenges, guide them in leveraging United AI Studio’s multi-cloud capabilities, and help them build scalable, impactful AI solutions. In addition to customer solutioning, you will contribute to internal AI innovations that improve platform capabilities and engineering workflows.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Contribute to the development and deployment of AI/ML solutions that address complex business challenges and opportunities for the United AI Studio Enterprise Platform
• Engage with platform users to understand their AI/ML use cases, data challenges, and business goals
• Recommend appropriate algorithms, frameworks, tools, and United AI Studio capabilities
• Create solution architectures, prototypes, and reference implementations
• Decompose complex problems into simple, straight-forward solutions
• Technical Leadership: Provide technical guidance and mentorship to offshore and onshore engineering teams, fostering collaboration and continuous improvement
• Write robust, scalable, and maintainable code that adheres to high standards of quality and performance
• Stay up-to-date with the latest advancements in AI/ML technology and introduce innovative techniques and tools to the team.
• Should be flexible, adapting to meet the needs of the team, project, or product
• Solicit differing views and are willing to change your mind as you learn more
• Should be flexible, adapting to meet the needs of the team, project, or product
• 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 regard 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 computer science or related field; or bachelor’s degree and at least 8 years of relevant experience
• 5+ years industry experience as a Data Scientist, AI/ML Software Engineer, or AI/ML Engineer, with at least 2+ years in senior or lead role
• 5+ years of experience with demonstrable proficiency in programming languages including Python
• 3+ years of experience implementing AI/ML solutions on cloud platforms (e.g. Databricks, Azure, AWS, GCP, Snowflake)
• 3+ years of experience and demonstratable ability to lead and mentor a technical team with a collaborative and results-driven approach
• Experience with cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP) and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Proficiency in AI/ML frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, or Keras; or distributed computing frameworks such as Apache Spark
• Solid understanding of ML lifecycle: data prep, model training, evaluation, deployment, monitoring.
• Proven excellent communication and customer-facing skills

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with MLOps practices and tools for continuous integration and deployment of ML models
• Experience with DevOps practices, including CI/CD, containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), and infrastructure as code
• Experience and demonstratable ability to lead and mentor a technical team with a collaborative and results-driven approach
• Familiarity with LLMs, generative AI, and prompt engineering
• Higher-level understanding of AI/ML use-cases and production implementation
• Collaborating with geographically distributed teams

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.