Senior 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 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 a highly skilled AI Engineer to lead the development of our Digital Experience (DEX) AI platform, focused on transforming endpoint telemetry, incident data, and user-reported issues into actionable intelligence.

This role sits at the intersection of software engineering, data engineering, and applied AI, and will drive the design and delivery of scalable, real-time AI-powered applications in the enterprise space.

You will collaborate closely with Software Engineers, Data Analysts, Data Scientists, and AI/ML Engineers to build intelligent systems that improve user experience, reduce incidents, and enable proactive IT operations.

Primary Responsibilities:

• AI Application Engineering
  • Design and build production-grade AI applications leveraging large-scale enterprise data (telemetry, incidents, user signals)
  • Develop real-time and on-demand AI services for classification, summarization, anomaly detection, and insight generation
  • Integrate LLMs (OpenAI / Azure OpenAI) into enterprise workflows with a focus on accuracy, explainability, and cost efficiency
  • Implement retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and structured reasoning patterns to ensure deterministic, evidence-based outputs
• Platform & Architecture
  • Lead architecture and development of AI services deployed on Azure (App Services, Functions, AI Services)
  • Design scalable pipelines using Snowflake for feature engineering, data preparation, and AI-ready datasets
  • Build APIs and microservices to integrate AI capabilities into web applications and dashboards
  • Optimize performance, latency, and cost of AI workloads at scale
• Data & Intelligence Engineering
  • Work with large-scale datasets including:
    • Endpoint telemetry (CPU, memory, disk, network)
    • Incident / ITSM data
    • User experience signals
  • Partner with Data Scientists to productionize models and analytics
  • Establish data normalization, canonicalization, and AI-friendly schemas
• Cross-Functional Leadership
  • Act as technical lead across:
    • Software Engineering
    • Data Engineering / Analytics
    • AI/ML teams
  • Translate business problems into AI-driven solutions aligned with ITIL and DEX strategies
  • Drive best practices in AI engineering, prompt design, and model evaluation
• Governance & Reliability
  • Ensure AI outputs are:
    • Evidence-based and grounded in data
    • Non-hallucinatory and explainable
  • Implement monitoring for:
    • Model performance
    • Drift and quality degradation
    • Cost and token usage
• 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 or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, or related field
• 5+ years of experience in software engineering, data engineering, or AI engineering roles
• Proven experience building AI-powered applications (not just models)
• Technical Expertise
  • Programming: Python (required), experience with APIs and backend systems
  • Cloud Platform: Microsoft Azure (App Services, Functions, Storage, AI services)
  • Data Platform: Solid experience with Snowflake (SQL, data modeling, pipelines)
  • AI/LLMs:
    • OpenAI / Azure OpenAI APIs
    • Prompt engineering and evaluation techniques
    • RAG architectures and vector search
    • System Design: Experience building scalable, distributed systems

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with Digital Employee Experience (DEX) platforms (e.g., Nexthink, Lakeside SysTrack)
• Experience building enterprise analytics dashboards or AI-driven web applications
• Familiarity with ITIL frameworks and incident management domains
• Knowledge of:
  • Vector databases / embeddings
  • Real-time data processing pipelines
  • Model observability tools

Key Traits for Success

• Solid ownership mindset - able to lead end-to-end AI application delivery
• Ability to balance innovation with operational reliability and cost control
• Skilled in translating complex AI concepts into business value and actionable insights
• Highly collaborative across engineering, data, and business stakeholders

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.