Senior Architect

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. 

At Optum Insight, we are at the forefront of modernizing healthcare. We are seeking a visionary Application Architect to own the technical design and strategy for a pivotal component at the heart of Payer solutions business.

This is a unique opportunity to modernize and build a mission-critical, event-driven system from the ground up. You will be responsible for designing a highly scalable, resilient, and performant service that processes real-time data streams for millions of members. If you are passionate about building robust distributed systems and want to make a tangible impact in healthcare, this role is for you.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Architectural Ownership: Own and define the end-to-end technical architecture for the Component/Service, ensuring it aligns with our Domain-Driven Design (DDD) and event-driven principles
• System Design: Design and document data models, API contracts (REST), and event schemas. Create and maintain architectural diagrams including state machines, component diagrams, and sequence diagrams to guide the development team
• Data-Intensive Application Design: Architect a solution that efficiently consumes, processes, and evaluates high-volume data streams from Apache Kafka, originating from systems like our Common Data Intake service and other domain services
• Database Strategy: Lead the design and implementation of our database strategy using MongoDB Atlas on Azure. This includes schema design, indexing strategies, and leveraging advanced features like the Aggregation Framework for real-time analytics and Atlas Search for fuzzy matching capabilities
• Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Guide and mentor a team of talented engineers on best practices for building scalable microservices using Java, Spring Boot, and Kafka. Provide hands-on guidance where needed
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work closely with other architects, product owners, and business stakeholders to translate complex business requirements into a robust, secure, and maintainable technical solution
• Ensure Non-Functional Requirements: Design for scalability, high availability, data security (HIPAA compliance), and performance. Define SLOs/SLIs and ensure the system is instrumented for effective monitoring and alerting
• Legacy Integration: Understand the existing data landscape, including data stores like Hive and processing jobs in Spark, to ensure seamless integration and migration paths
• 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:

• 11+ years of professional software engineering experience with a focus on building enterprise-scale, backend systems
• 3+ years in a technical leadership or architect role with a proven track record of designing and delivering complex software projects
• Expert Database Design Skills:
  • Solid hands-on experience with NoSQL document databases, particularly MongoDB, including schema design and performance tuning
  • Solid foundation in relational databases (SQL) and understanding of when to use each
• Data Processing Knowledge: Experience working within a modern data ecosystem that includes technologies like Apache Spark and Hive
• API Design Mastery: Extensive experience designing, developing, and documenting secure, scalable REST APIs
• Microsoft Azure Knowledge: Experience working with MS Azure to provide cloud services for infrastructure, computing and database
• Event-Driven Architecture: Proven experience designing and implementing solutions using Apache Kafka for high-throughput, real-time data streaming
• Deep Expertise in the Java Ecosystem: Mastery of Java and the Spring Boot framework for building RESTful APIs and microservices

Preferred Qualifications:

• Search Engine Experience: Hands-on experience with Elasticsearch or, even better, MongoDB Atlas Search for implementing complex search and fuzzy matching logic
• Domain-Driven Design (DDD): Practical experience applying DDD principles (Bounded Contexts, Aggregates, Events) to build maintainable and business-aligned software
• Cloud Platform Expertise: Experience architecting and deploying applications on a major cloud provider, with a solid preference for Microsoft Azure
• CI/CD & DevOps: Experience working in a mature DevOps environment with CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Jenkins, Azure DevOps), containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform)
• System Observability: Experience with monitoring and observability stacks such as Prometheus, Grafana, or Dynatrace
• Healthcare Domain Knowledge: Familiarity with the healthcare industry, particularly related to risk adjustment (HCCs), quality measures (HEDIS), and PHI/HIPAA compliance
• Experience coordinating and managing distributed teams of varying size and skill set and working with or as part of a matrixed organization
• Knowledge of Terraform
• Knowledge of AZURE: Virtual Network (VNet), Subnets, VPN Gateway / ExpressRoute, Azure SQL Database / Azure Database for PostgreSQL/MySQL, Azure Virtual Machines (VMs), Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) / Azure Container Instances (ACI), Azure Monitor / Log Analytics, Azure Blob Storage, Azure Functions, Azure Event Grid / Azure Notification Hubs, Azure Service Bus / Azure Queue Storage, Azure Data Box / Azure File Sync / SFTP on Azure Blob Storage
• Knowledge of Programming Languages: Javascript, Java (Spring Boot), Node.js, Angular
• Solid understanding and experience in delivery software using the agile SAFe framework
• Proven planning skills and the ability to work with limited supervision
• Proven solid verbal and written communication skills including presentation skills
• Proven solid conflict resolution and negotiation skills
• Proven ability to work well in a matrixed cross-functional environment and a builder of professional relationships

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.