Director Software Engineering

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.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Drive technical strategies in partnership with business to ensure technology strategies meet business objectives
• Advise business unit tech and business leaders on technology and industry trends leveraging new and emerging technology and methods
• In support of the business, identify new and analyze existing business products and systems. Develop initiatives, programs, and projects in order to drive the business objectives for growth, evaluating new markets and creating new offerings
• Drive innovation through ‘show and tell’ illustrated through the art-of-the-possible proof of concepts
• Identify the value proposition, cost benefit analysis and business impact for the initiatives
• Evolve technology through engineering excellence by driving to the best engineering: discipline, architecture, processes, agile delivery methodologies, estimation processes, and post-delivery support
• Align and define best practice approaches with the business by: Establishing organizational change and focus, leading organizational change, driving innovation and delivering on execution
• Foster teamwork and collaboration between the IT and business; identifying the right talent, driving organizational talent change, hiring for talent in the future, and empowering employee engagement
• Focus on the development and growth of architecture talent and leaders
• Direct creation of Enterprise Architecture solutions and ensure development alignment with proposed solutions
• Provide technical leadership in architecture, design, and engineering in modernization of legacy solutions, establishing best practices and a technical roadmap
• Collaborate with other architects on the system design and architecture to enable secure, scalable, and maintainable software
• Produce solutions that are models of performance, scalability, and extensibility
• Ideate/ Solution next generation applications to use Data as a strategic platform to grow the top line revenue
• Create/review/update application design and deployment patterns for the public/private/hybrid cloud contexts 
• Develop system designs, specification documents for implementation, and develop Infrastructure-as-Code to support recommended solutions
• Serve as the cloud subject matter expert who provides strategy and architecture recommendations for the organization and leadership
• Will work with leaders and team members at all levels and across functional lines 
• Present to Business/IT teams on Optum’s infrastructure and hosting services and identify the benefits of hosting and/or integrating with Optum
• Influence internal peer teams to adapt services and processes to better meet integration requirements
• Daily meetings with team and customers/application teams to gather requirements, lead technical conversations
• Provide input on RFPs/RFIs/SOWs and translate high-level architecture diagrams into cost estimations
• Maintain technical knowledge of current and emerging technologies / products / trends related to security and architectural solutions
• Stay abreast of leading-edge technologies in the industry evaluating emerging software technologies
• Look across teams and products to find synergies and solutioning mindset to identify/remove duplication
• Set automation standards, implements tooling to support/report adherence
• Willingness to put in the effort, working outside normal business hours, if necessary, to meet project timelines
• Work effectively in a diverse organization spread across multiple locations
• Drive the use of new and innovative technologies into standard engineering design and practice such as AI/ML
• 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
• 15+ years of professional IT experience, with steadily increasing responsibilities
• 10+ years of developer experience with one or more common programming languages (.NET, Java, Python, Node, etc.)
• 5+ years of experience leading teams and/or managing IT Project timelines and deliverables
• 4+ years of IT solution architecture experience
• 2+ years of experience designing and building highly distributed, scalable systems
• 1+ years of experience with public cloud development
• Experience working in an Agile environment
• Experience with DevOps methodologies and enabling Automation within development teams
• Experience provisioning cloud services using Terraform or similar methodology
• Experience in performance and scalability optimization
• Knowledge and understanding of diverse platforms and operating systems, including current and emerging technologies 
• Knowledge and understanding of technical design patterns.  Solid understanding of relational database structures, theories, principles, and practices
• Familiarity with various security/regulatory processes including standards & issues involved in multi-tier cloud or hybrid applications
• Sound understanding of industry standards around data privacy, risk management, and compliance requirements
• Proven highly motivated with proven success meeting commitments in a deadline-driven environment with multiple competing priorities 
• Proven ability to lead change and innovation – pursue opportunities to adopt new technologies and drive adoption to enhance business outcomes – drive and mange high-quality execution across organizational lines
• Proven ability to grow and maintain knowledge of and leverage cutting edge IT industry / marketplace technologies and trends to support highly available distributed systems, and the transformation of legacy systems
• Proven ability of developing relationships across technical, management, and executive levels
• Proven ability to juggle multiple projects and timelines while keeping customers, team and leadership aware of status
• Proven ability to discuss cloud architecture and principles of modern platforms including SaaS, PaaS, multi-tenancy, multi-tiered infrastructure, etc.
• Demonstrated ability to influence opinion without direct managerial control
• Proven crisp, articulate written and verbal communication skills 

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.