Principal Data Scientist

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.  

In healthcare, evolution doesn’t just happen. It takes innovation, imagination, and a passion for solving problems in new and better ways. And innovation is taking place at a lightning-fast pace every day at Optum. 

As the fastest growing part of the UnitedHealth Group family of businesses, we’re expanding our team in Ireland and creating excellent opportunities for those who want greater purpose and more impact in their work. We’ll provide the investment, support, and resources to advance your career. You’ll provide the talent, ambition, and drive.  

This position is to support next-generation Value-Based Care (VBC) projects, as well as the wider portfolio of Optum Health Data Science responsibilities. It will involve the generation and collation of ‘gaps’ in members’ clinical management – clinical, documentation and quality measures – and the use of this information in pilot studies, aiming to improve clinical outcomes for members. This is a technical role, requiring familiarity with different types of data infrastructure and a basic knowledge of data engineering.

As well as working closely with other team members, it will be expected that the incumbent contributes to the mentorship, guidance and development of junior data scientists. In addition to being part of a high performing data science function, the incumbent will also be accountable for translating United Health Group’s culture and values into action and be a role model for all members of the team.

Primary Responsibilities: 

• The development of data infrastructure, in order to collate data from multiple sources, across different platforms, into a single cloud location
• Data quality checks, in order to ensure the accurate coverage of the whole membership
• The development of pipelines to automate the gap generation and collation process
• Monitoring AI model output for drift and retraining models where necessary
• Work closely with US-based colleagues, to coordinate the onshore running of scripts
• Clearly communicate processes and outputs to senior stakeholders, when required
• Mentor more junior data science colleagues
• Drive excellence and standardization across the data science team with a focus on skills development, training and career progression
• Drive inclusion and diversity as part of enhancing continued development of a team culture, and approach across data science

You will be rewarded and recognised 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:

• Bachelor’s Degree (or higher) in Applied Mathematics, Physics, Computer Science, Statistics, or related technical field
• Proficiency in Python and SQ
• Substantial hands-on experience with Spark, Hadoop or other big data platforms (e.g. Databricks, Snowflake/Snowpark, AWS SageMaker)
• Substantial hands-on experience in machine learning/statistical modeling techniques and advanced data science frameworks
• Experience with software development principles and related tools, including Unix/Linux command line, version control (git), workflow/pipeline management (Airflow), unit testing libraries etc.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Working with healthcare data (claims, authorization, provider contracts, etc).
• Understanding of the US healthcare system.
• Experience in Affordability, Suspecting and Recapture Gap generation, with a particular focus on data mining and collation of disparate data sources.

Soft Skills:

• Ability to identify opportunities and/or produce innovative solutions driven by exploratory data analysis from large unstructured, diverse datasets
• Ability to communicate technical results, with a connection back to the business objectives, to a diverse audience
• Skilled at developing and fostering an inclusive and collaborative culture as part of a global team
• Willingness to take on leadership roles within teams
• Ability to work under pressure and time constraints
• Natural curiosity to learn more, dig into details, and understand the key drivers of emerging trends and challenges

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. © 2023 Optum Services (Ireland) Limited. All rights reserved.

 

 

#RPO