Senior 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. 

About the Role:

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. 
The Payment Integrity Data Enablement Team Senior Data Scientist will leverage their expertise in data science and consumer analytics to create transformative data-driven solutions that lead to better provider experience and higher efficiencies in the UHC Payment Integrity domain.  
We’re looking for someone with advanced proficiency in statistics, model building, validation and deployment, natural language processing and machine learning techniques and a well-developed communication, data storytelling / visualization skill set.

This role is responsible for the creation and evaluation of data science models using advanced statistical techniques and for generating data-driven insights by analyzing structured and unstructured data in the provider analytics domain. Individuals in this role will work closely with junior and senior data scientists and statisticians to deliver solutions across the UHC provider journey spectrum. 
By understanding the capabilities, strategies, financial and operational goals of stakeholders, successful individuals in this role will identify opportunities to leverage data science or core analytic solutions to drive higher efficiency and improve customer experience across UHG. 
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 or Letterkenny and telecommuting from a home-based office in a hybrid work model. 
 
Primary Responsibilities:

•    Work collaboratively with business partners, SMEs, and developers to ensure a shared understanding of business requirements
•    Partner with cross-functional teams, refine requirements, and use it to shape product development efforts.
•    Work with vast amounts of data from multiple sources to develop/refine/improve predictive models using advanced Python and machine learning techniques. Significant focus on leveraging the unstructured and structured data from UHC provider journeys
•    Deliver high-impact actionable insights to senior leadership and business operations; enable data-driven decision-making across the enterprise to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of UHC Operations, while focusing on provider experience improvement
•    Perform exploratory data analysis from structured, unstructured, and diverse datasets; apply knowledge of statistics, machine learning, programming, data modeling, simulation, and advanced mathematics to recognize patterns, identify opportunities, pose business questions, and make valuable discoveries leading to prototype development and product improvement
•    Helping source, clean, prepare and verify integrity of data to be used for analysis
•    Discover and communicate actionable insights to decision makers. Make presentations to sr. executives and decision-makers
•    Partner with various functions to produce innovative and transformative data science solutions which directly contribute to achieving enterprise goals and vision
 
You’ll 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 provide development for other roles you may be interested in. 

Required Qualifications:

•    Experience handling terabyte size datasets, diving into data to discover hidden patterns, using data visualization tools (such as Tableau or PowerBI), advanced proficiency in SQL
•    Experience performing exploratory data analysis from structured, unstructured, and diverse datasets; apply knowledge of statistics, machine learning, programming, data modeling, simulation, and advanced mathematics to recognize patterns, identify opportunities, pose business questions, and make valuable discoveries leading to prototype development and product improvement
•    Experience developing innovative analytic solutions and predictive models, creating actionable insights, and driving better decisions and performance to help the business achieve its business objectives
•    Experience developing queries and models to evaluate results and formulate solutions to drive process & performance improvement
•    Experience developing visionary and creative analytic solutions to measure business performance; identifies / quantifies drivers, risks and opportunities and defines solutions to mitigate risks and leverage opportunities
•    Experience influencing senior leadership to adopt new ideas, projects and / or approaches
•    Understand operations at a deep level, develop metrics and report on critical outcomes
•    Advanced proficiency in SQL, Python & Excel
•    Demonstrated business focus; excel at connecting business requirements to analytic objectives and to measurable business benefit
•    Demonstrated partner with various functions to produce innovative and transformative data science solutions which directly contribute to achieving enterprise goals and vision
•    Demonstrated ability to serve as a subject matter expert in data science.  Provide guidance and mentorship to team members
 
Preferred Qualifications:

•    Hands-on experience in Natural Language Processing (NLP) based solution development, using machine learning in general and deep learning techniques
•    Experience with Azure Cloud and Snowflake
•    Experience with CI/CD frameworks for BI
•    Healthcare / Pharmacy experience
•    Knowledge of Payment Integrity operations
•    Demonstrated experience in solving problems like text classification using both supervised & unsupervised techniques, Natural Language Generation (NLU), entity recognition, transfer learning, language modeling and transformer-based architecture
•    Experience in any of the following: Omnichannel strategy, Customer Service Analytics, Call Optimization
•    Experience with cloud-based analytic services
•    Demonstrated experience in frameworks such as FastAi, Hugging Face & Pytorch
•    Advanced proficiency in fine tuning, training, and validating a text classifier algorithm
•    Proficient in exploring & analyzing unstructured / text data and conclude findings/insights
•    Demonstrated ability to obviation strategy, digital and messaging adoption, Provider behavioral analytics
 
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.

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. © 2025 Optum Services (Ireland) Limited. All rights reserved.