Lead AI/ML Engineer

Lead AI/ML Engineer – Lead AI/ML 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 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.

Information is the lifeblood of the healthcare industry-everything depends on it. At Optum Insight Technology & Engineering, you’ll help us work on streamlining the flow of information between payers, healthcare providers and various other stakeholders to deliver the right insights to the right places at the right times, driving better outcomes for patients, reducing friction in the health system and lowering costs. Every day our work directly impacts the world for the better, in meaningful and profound ways.  
 
We live in a time of unprecedented technical capability and possibility. Health care is at a pivotal point in this journey where even small gains can lead to major transformation. You could be a part of that – you have tremendous skill and the potential to make a lasting impact. Optum Insight Technology is uniquely positioned to bring your skills to bear on these pressing and life-changing technical challenges. The health care industry has an immediate need for your drive, innovation, passion and technical insight. Help us help the millions of people we serve each day.
 
The Lead AI/ML Engineer plays a key technical contributor in the design and development of state-of-the-art ML for medical applications. The Lead AI/ML Engineer works closely with ML engineers, research linguists, software engineers and subject matter experts on current company technologies and forward-looking projects. Lead Engineers initiate and lead new research initiatives into unexplored modeling approaches, mentoring and guiding teams to adopt new technologies.

Schedule: This is a full-time position with standard working hours of Monday – Friday, 9am – 5pm.

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

Primary Responsibilities of the Lead AI/ML Engineer:

• Initiate and drive novel method development in machine learning from first principles to deployed solutions

• Provide innovative modifications and extensions to existing deep learning and statistical learning architectures

• Perform independent statistical inquiry into new areas and identify growth points and areas of untapped information

• Partner with Engineering, Business and Technical Product to make and meet project commitments in an agile framework; rapidly delivering value to our customers via technology solutions

• Mentor junior data scientists to successfully deliver software and business value

• Responsible for continuous improvement for alerts, monitors and telemetry

• Communicate with stakeholders, subject matter experts, and colleagues to identify new means of approaching problems in the medical coding field

• Design novel methods in machine learning and launch them to production with the help of data engineers and deployment software engineers

• Perform independent analysis of trends in medical coding and production performance of statistical models

• Demonstrate leadership in the context of machine learning engineering and direct the research direction of a multidisciplinary team focused on deep learning and LLM approaches

• Stay abreast of leading-edge technologies in machine learning and deep learning, participate and lead in research talks and white paper reviews

• Participate in research meant to ensure alignment of models to ethical standards to ensure machine learning models perform without harm to users

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 of the Lead AI/ML Engineer:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or AI required or equivalent experience

• Extensive experience in machine learning or data science: data analysis, algorithm design, model architecture specification, machine learning algorithm implementation

• Extensive coding experience with Python with emphasis on libraries from Pytorch, HuggingFace, and pandas

• Proven experience leading development in a data science focused team using deep learning architectures

• Proven experience in machine learning model development, transformer architectures, data trend analysis

Preferred Qualifications of the Lead AI/ML Engineer: 

• Experience digesting and implementing research from primary literature or white paper resources

• Production experience with cloud and big data technologies

• Experience with SQL databases and query language

• Experience in AzureML, AWS, or cluster computing architectures

• Experience with Hybrid NLP solutions that combine symbolic and machine learning approaches

• Publication history in deep learning or statistical domain

• Healthcare domain background

• Master’s Degree or Doctoral Degree in Computer Science or AI

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.

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