Data Scientist

Data Scientist – Dublin or Letterkenny – Hybrid

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. 

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 Data Scientist position with Optum Life Sciences is building a new product called Enlighten Rare which aims to help pharmaceutical companies who manufacture treatments for rare diseases by identifying which patients have a documented diagnosis of a rare disease and which patients are suspected or at risk of developing a rare disease. Additionally, it will look at the treatment patterns for these patients. To date a first version of this product has been built by borrowing assets and resources from the Enlighten Chronic team, however, as the Enlighten Rare project grows, it will need its own data science team to manage the monthly production run, to develop new AI models that are optimized to work on rare conditions, to explore new data assets (Electronic Medical Records etc.) that are uniquely required for describing rare diseases, to complete data governance requests, and to propose new ideas for how the Enlighten Rare project can help solve the problems faced by Rare manufacturers 

Working Schedule: 

This is a full-time position, Monday – Friday with standard working hours

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 offices and telecommuting from a home-based office in a hybrid work model. 

Primary Responsibilities of the Data Scientist:

 

• Work with our clinical team to build and test new definitions of rare diseases in terms of the data available in medical coding systems (ICD10, Snomed, HCPC etc). This involves running SQL/pyspark queries against our dataset to find out how many members meet the new disease definition and report back to clinical team
• Develop AI models for predicting the development of rare diseases
• Manage the monthly production run for the rare disease project
• Explore new data assets with the aim of enriching our existing dataset with additional data types that will enhance our ability to identify and predict the presence of rare diseases
• Work with privacy, legal and compliance teams to get permission to use identified data for our projects, paying attention to all data governance requirements when working with PHI (personal health information)
• Develop an understanding of our product and our customers so that you can contribute new ideas/enhancements to our product

You will 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 providing development for other roles you may be interested in.

Required Qualifications of the Data Scientist: 

• Extensive experience with python (ETL, pandas, sklearn, knowledge of how to organise codes in modules for optimal code re-use etc)
• Experience in Git version control and high coding standards
• Experience working with large databases with either SQL or pyspark
• Wide knowledge of different supervised and unsupervised ML techniques, and knowledge of ML Ops for monitoring model performance over time

Preferred Qualifications of the Data Scientist: 

• Experience with cloud computing – we use databricks, Azure ML and Snowflake, but experience with equivalent cloud systems is acceptable
• Experience managing AI models and bringing them to production
• Experience using CICD (continuous integration continuous delivery) tools and job schedulers in production environments
• Experience working with privacy, legal, or compliance teams on the use of AI models in an ethical way and the use of protected healthcare data
• Domain Knowledge on US Health Care System (experience of claims and coding systems)

Soft Skills:

• Resourceful and able to work under own initiative
• Have strong communication skills and able to work with a wide range of teams including clinical, data engineering, business leaders, product owners etc
• Focuses on understanding business problems and developing solutions that work in practice rather than executing on ML projects that were assigned to them

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 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.

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 Traveler community, or any other characteristic protected by law. Optum is a drug-free workplace. © 2025 Optum Services (Ireland) Limited. All rights reserved.

 

 

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