Senior Manager AI or ML 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 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.

We are seeking an experienced Senior Manager of AI/ML Engineering to lead the design, development and deployment of next-generation generative AI solutions. You will build and scale engineering teams, drive technical strategy for agentic AI and multi-agent systems, and ensure delivery of high-performance, production-grade Generative AI applications in cloud environments.

Primary Responsibilities:

• AI/ML Engineering & Solution Delivery
  • Lead end to end development of Generative AI and traditional ML solutions, including experimentation, model training, and production deployment
  • Build scalable Python APIs and agentic workflows, optimized for Docker/Kubernetes and cloud environments
  • Translate business needs into high quality technical solutions through close partnership with engineering, data, and product teams
  • Ensure responsible AI practices, including fairness, transparency, accountability, and Human in the Loop controls
• Leadership & People Management
  • Lead and mentor multiple Agile engineering teams delivering production AI systems
  • Recruit, develop and retain top engineering talent while fostering inclusion, innovation and accountability
  • Align priorities across product and business teams to support predictable, high-quality delivery
  • Communicate risks, decisions and technical concepts clearly to technical and non-technical audiences
• Technical Strategy & Platform Excellence
  • Oversee architecture of multi agent and agentic AI systems (ReAct, HITL, ADK/A2A, MCP)
  • Define engineering best practices across CI/CD, testing, reliability, and code quality
  • Manage cloud infrastructure (GCP/AWS/Azure) for secure, scalable, cost-efficient AI deployment
  • Optimize vector databases, SQL/NoSQL stores and semantic search capabilities
  • Implement observability (Splunk, OpenTelemetry) and lead incident response and post mortems to improve system reliability
• 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:

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science, AI/Software Engineering, or a related technical field
• 5+ years designing and deploying cloud native solutions (GCP preferred) for scalable AI/ML workloads
• 4+ years of engineering leadership experience, including people management and driving strategic initiatives
• 3+ years hands-on experience with Generative AI and agentic/multi agent systems (LLMs, context engineering, ADK/A2A, MCP, or similar frameworks)
• Experience with performance tuning, load testing, and observability tooling (Splunk, OpenTelemetry or equivalent)
• Proven experience deploying NLP or LLM-based solutions in production with large datasets
• Solid understanding of Agile methodologies and stakeholder management
• Solid proficiency in Python, API development, microservices, Docker/Kubernetes, CI/CD, vector databases, and SQL/NoSQL systems
• Proven solid written and verbal communication skills, able to present technical concepts to diverse audiences

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in AI/ML or related field
• Experience applying Machine Learning techniques in a commercial enterprise, including supervised, unsupervised learning, time-series forecasting and other statistical analyses
• Experience in the Healthcare domain

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.