Principal Software 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.

As a Principal Software Engineer, you will be the technical leader responsible for architecting and delivering cloud-native, voice-driven solutions using AWS services and Google’s voice bot technologies (Dialogflow, CCAI). You will collaborate cross-functionally with product, DevOps, and AI/ML teams to build highly scalable, intelligent voice experiences and cloud integrations. This role demands hands-on development, strategic technical decision-making, and mentoring of engineering teams.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Design and implement scalable, secure, and resilient backend systems on AWS Amazon Connect
• Lead the architecture and development of voice bots using Google Dialogflow (ES/CX) and CCAI for contact center automation
• Integrate speech technologies (STT/TTS), NLP models, and third-party services into conversational flows
• Collaborate with stakeholders to translate business requirements into technical specifications
• Provide technical leadership and guidance to engineering teams across the organization
• Drive DevOps and CI/CD best practices using AWS tools, Github work flows, Terraform and infrastructure-as-code (IaC)
• Optimize voice experiences for latency, scalability, and user engagement
• Review code and provide constructive feedback to foster engineering excellence
• Stay up to date on emerging cloud and AI technologies and evaluate their fit for enterprise solutions
• 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:

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, including architecture-level work
• 2+ years of experience developing and deploying Google Dialogflow bots (ES/CX), or Contact Center AI applications
• Solid hands-on experience with AWS services: Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, ECS/EKS, CloudFormation/Terraform, etc.
• Experience with CI/CD, containerization (Docker), and orchestration (Kubernetes, AWS Fargate)
• Deep knowledge of REST APIs, microservices, and event-driven architectures
• Deep knowledge in Splunk, Kibana and Grafana
• Proficiency in Python, Node.js, or Java 
• Proven solid communication skills and ability to mentor engineers

Preferred Qualifications:

• Certifications in AWS (e.g., AWS Certified Solutions Architect) or GCP Dialogflow/CCAI
• Experience in multiple languages
• Experience with telephony integration (Genesys)
• Experience in regulated industries (e.g., healthcare, finance)
• Exposure to machine learning models or natural language understanding (NLU)

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.

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