Principal I O 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.   

The System Engineer - Infrastructure & Program Manager is a senior, dual‑accountability role combining hands‑on infrastructure engineering & architecture leadership with end‑to‑end ownership of complex infrastructure migration workstreams.

The role plays a critical function in Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) leading infrastructure assessments for data‑center consolidation, cloud adoption, and platform integration. The individual ensures all infrastructure assets from acquired entities are prepared for transition into Optum enterprise‑standard platforms across on‑premises, co‑location, and native cloud environments, while protecting system stability, security, and business continuity.

This role partners extensively with application architects, engineering teams, security, operations, finance, and senior leadership, translating business and technical requirements into approved architecture diagrams, executable delivery plans, and measurable outcomes.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Infrastructure Engineering & Architecture
  • Conduct comprehensive assessment and inventory of complex infrastructure and applications hosted in Acquired Entity Data Centers, including individual server CPU, RAM, storage, virtual vs. physical, networking, middleware, application/host mapping details, etc.
  • Translate business and application requirements into conceptual, logical, and physical designs, aligned with enterprise reference architectures and hosting standards
  • Define infrastructure sizing, capacity, and performance requirements for web, application, database, and supporting tiers
  • Own the end‑to‑end infrastructure design for complex application and platform deployments across compute, storage, network, database, middleware, and cloud
  • Provide architecture oversight throughout delivery to ensure design intent is preserved during implementation
  • Ensure architectural compliance with enterprise standards, security controls, and governance frameworks
  • Conduct infrastructure risk assessments and define mitigation and contingency strategies aligned to availability, resilience, and disaster‑recovery objectives
  • Maintain strong awareness of enterprise platforms, technology roadmaps, and industry trends, incorporating them pragmatically into solution designs
  • Demonstrate deep understanding of data‑center and hybrid hosting environments, including virtualization and cloud integration patterns
• Migration, Integration M&A
  • Lead infrastructure discovery and due‑diligence activities for acquired entities, including servers, storage, virtualization, network dependencies, and hosting models
  • Analyze application dependencies and infrastructure constraints to define migration strategies and sequencing
  • Evaluate on‑premises vs cloud suitability, contributing to target‑state platform and hosting decisions
  • Drive integration of acquired environments into enterprise‑standard compute, storage, network, identity, monitoring, and security platforms
  • Identify infrastructure risks, gaps, and remediation requirements impacting M&A timelines and integration outcomes
  • Assess disaster‑recovery maturity of acquired systems and lead alignment to enterprise DR standards
• Project/Program Management
  • Own delivery of comprehensive assessments of large‑scale, multi‑workstream infrastructure workstreams including M&A integrations, data‑center migrations, and cloud adoption initiatives.
  • Drive, lead, plan and execute extremely fluid and complex infrastructure projects managing multiple critical path deliverables with multiple teams simultaneously
  • Develop and manage end‑to‑end execution of assessment plans, covering scope, schedule, milestones, dependencies, assumptions, risks, and communications
  • Lead infrastructure and application assessments, producing clear hosting recommendations and execution roadmaps
  • Create and manage SOWs, delivery estimates, cost models, and resourcing assumptions
  • Drive execution across multiple concurrent initiatives, maintaining focus on critical‑path and high‑risk deliverables
  • Coordinate and influence cross‑functional teams including architecture, engineering, operations, security, finance, vendors, and business stakeholders
  • Provide structured, executive‑ready status reporting, dashboards, and communications
  • Ensure delivery meets agreed schedule, scope, quality, and risk‑management expectations
  • Keeping project information consolidated, organized and up to date
  • Proactive issue identification and resolution. Serve as an escalation point for complex issues, problems and solutions
  • Support and assist teams to remove roadblocks, identify alternative options and resolve conflict
• Stakeholder Engagement & Leadership
  • Present infrastructure strategies, recommendations, risks, and cost implications to business leaders and senior technology leadership
  • Translate complex technical concepts into clear, outcome‑focused communication tailored and understood by a variety of audiences
  • Provide leadership to influence adoption of standard platforms, patterns, and best practices across projects
  • Build credibility through strong professional presence, clear decision‑making, and delivery accountability
  • *Innovation & Productivity Enablement
  • Apply GenAI and modern productivity tooling to improve daily tasks, assessment quality, planning accuracy, risk identification, reporting efficiency and decision-making
  • Identify opportunities for automation and AI‑assisted execution to enhance efficiency
  • Continually seek, recommend and lead opportunities outside of daily job responsibilities to adopt new services, improve customer experience, identify delivery process improvements, implement efficiencies, support a one-team culture, delivery solutions, processes and performance, within DCIO/Business Partner Engagement/IS Teams and across Optum Technology
• 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 equivalent practical experience
• 10+ years of overall IT experience with a strong background in infrastructure engineering and architecture
• 6+ years of experience owning infrastructure projects or program in large enterprise environments
• Demonstrated experience leading infrastructure delivery, integrations, M&A, or data‑center consolidation projects
• Deep experience across multiple infrastructure domains: compute, storage, network, virtualization, and cloud
• Solid understanding of enterprise application architectures and their infrastructure implications
• Proficiency in computer software including MS Project, Power Point, Excel & Visio
• Proven ability to lead complex, ambiguous initiatives with multiple stakeholders and competing priorities
• Proven solid leadership presence & collaboration skills across architecture, security, operations, and PMO functions
• Proven ability to display a high degree of professional confidence and credibility with presence and communication skills to effectively represent IT-related concepts with executive-level management. Organize presentation's timing, purpose, key points, and approach to be engaging, focused, and relevant
• Proven ability to operate effectively in fast‑paced, time‑bound environments
• Proven solid documentation, analytical, and executive‑level communication skills
• Demonstrated ownership mindset with high accountability for delivery outcomes
• Proven excellent critical thinking skills, analytical ability, and problem analysis techniques

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with productivity tools including Smartsheets, Rally, and Service Now
• Leadership experience on large, enterprise‑scale M&A projects
• UnitedHealth Group or subsidiary work experience
• Healthcare or other regulated‑industry technology experience
• Proven healthcare technology background
• Proven exposure to application rationalization and cloud landing‑zone design

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.