Senior Director of 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.

About the Role

The Senior Director of Software Engineering is tasked with providing strategic leadership and direction to large-scale, cross-functional technology teams while championing AI, innovation and collaboration across the OPEN organization. This role involves overseeing the development lifecycle of high-impact product solutions, ensuring technical excellence, scalability, and operational efficiency.

Key responsibilities include shaping engineering design and culture, driving AI strategy to unlock customer and operational value, and aligning technical strategies with broader business goals. The director fosters close partnerships across business units, advocates for cross-functional collaboration, and ensures robust stakeholder management practices.

Talent development is a cornerstone of this role, requiring the creation of growth-oriented plans, including recruitment and mentorship, to build a high-performing team. Additionally, the position demands a focus on operational excellence, integrating modern technologies like cloud-native design, DevOps, and infrastructure automation to deliver reliable and cost-effective solutions.

Reporting to VP of Technology for OPEN team, this senior role plays a critical part in ensuring seamless product launches, influencing business outcomes, and maintaining transparency and trust between technical and business leadership.

Primary Responsibilities

• Provide visionary leadership and direction for the end-to-end development life cycle of a portfolio of high-impact, complex product solutions that deliver significant value to the organization
• Serve as a seasoned and trusted leader, directly responsible for shaping engineering organization design and driving a product engineering culture grounded in innovation, technical excellence, and accountability for outcomes
• Lead large-scale, cross-functional technology teams across multiple disciplines, overseeing design, development, testing, integration, deployment, and ongoing support and maintenance to ensure delivery of robust, scalable, and high-quality products
• Champion close partnership and collaboration with peer OPEN leaders (Product Management, Architecture, Engineering and Portfolio), Business partners and other cross Enterprise teams (e.g. security, analytics, technology, legal, compliance, AI, etc.) to define, prioritize, and execute product roadmaps and technical strategies that advance both business and technology goals
• Drive the evolution and execution of an AI and innovation strategy aimed at improving customer value, operational efficiencies, and future-ready digital capabilities
• Support Director of Architecture in early-stage ideation, technical governance, technical architecture discussions, recommending optimal solutions and innovative approaches while ensuring technical feasibility, scalability, and maintainability
• Foster stakeholder management practices, ensuring transparent communication, trust, and alignment between technology teams and senior business leadership
• Serve as a thought leader and advocate for the benefits of enterprise-wide collaboration, ensuring cohesive engagement across engineering, data, product, and business functions
• Lead the creation and execution of talent development plans, including coaching, mentoring, and career pathing to build a high-performing, engaged, and growth-oriented engineering organization
• Establish and drive operational excellence, ensuring the reliability, performance, and cost-efficiency of production services and solutions
• Take a hands-on role in recruitment, selection, and retention strategies to attract top-tier technical talent and thought leaders into the organization
• Provide executive-level guidance for product launches and customer adoption initiatives, ensuring technology alignment with market and business demands

Required:

• Proven, extensive leadership experience in building and leading world-class software and product engineering teams with a track record of driving measurable business impact
• Passion for innovation, with experience developing and implementing AI strategies that unlock value and efficiency across product portfolios
• Deep expertise in product engineering, agile delivery practices, and modern software development methodologies with strong focus on quality, scalability, and performance
• Demonstrated excellence in stakeholder management, with ability to influence and align cross-functional and senior leadership teams toward shared outcomes
• Business acumen with the ability to connect technical strategies to business outcomes and market dynamics
• Expertise in back-end technology stacks (Java, Spring Boot, REST API development) as well as modern data platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP, Databricks, Snowflake, Kafka, etc.)
• Practical experience implementing DevOps, CI/CD, infrastructure automation, and cloud-native design principles at scale
• Skilled in building and sustaining collaborative cultures that bridge engineering, product, business, and enterprise technology teams
• Ability to manage transformation processes
• Exceptional communication skills, able to engage, inspire, and drive consensus across all organizational levels.

Preferred:

• Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field
• Prior experience leading technology initiatives in healthcare, digital health platforms, or other regulated industries
• Demonstrated success in evangelizing and embedding AI-driven solutions into core product and business strategies
• Recognized champion of enterprise collaboration with a reputation for building trust-based relationships across business and technical teams
• Familiarity with open-source platforms and tools, as well as agile, lean, and evidence-based engineering practices

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.

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.

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.