Senior Manager Data 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.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Own and drive end-to-end delivery of complex data engineering initiatives, ensuring alignment with business objectives, architectural standards, and enterprise data strategy
• Provide technical leadership and oversight for analysis and resolution of user‑submitted incidents and enhancement requests, ensuring root cause analysis and sustainable fixes
• Lead analysis of source systems and downstream data flows, guiding teams on data ingestion, transformation, validation, and consumption patterns
• Review and govern solution designs, including Conceptual, Logical, and Technical Design documents, ensuring scalability, reliability, security, and performance
• Oversee and guide teams in defining unit, integration, and user acceptance test strategies, ensuring high data quality and production readiness
• Act as a technical escalation point, providing expert interpretation, recommendations, and risk mitigation within the data engineering domain
• Partner closely with Architecture, Product, and Business stakeholders to translate requirements into robust, well‑governed data solutions
• Ensure delivery predictability, including effort estimation, dependency management, and proactive identification and communication of risks and issues
• Drive continuous improvement by identifying opportunities to optimize ETL processes, improve performance, and reduce operational overhead
• Solid command over data modeling concepts, ETL architecture, Cloud skillset across large-scale enterprise platforms
• Deep expertise in Cloud, ETL frameworks, data pipelines, and orchestration patterns, with the ability to guide teams across multiple tools and platforms
• Lead and review SQL performance tuning strategies for large, high‑volume datasets
• Exhibit solid written and verbal communication skills, effectively conveying designs, trade‑offs, risks, and recommendations to senior stakeholders and clients
• Build, mentor, and manage high‑performing, cross‑skilled engineering teams, fostering accountability, technical excellence, and ownership
• Work with a high degree of autonomy, while influencing outcomes across teams and functions without direct authority
• Proactively identify ways to add value beyond stated deliverables, including platform modernization, automation, data quality improvements, and cost optimization
• Demonstrate the mindset and capability of a cross‑skilled engineering leader, spanning data engineering, cloud platforms, performance, quality, and operational excellence
• 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 in computer science or an equivalent degree
• 14+ years of progressive experience in data engineering, including large‑scale ETL development, SQL, scripting (Python, Unix), and modern cloud platforms (preferably Azure)
• Demonstrated experience owning and supporting enterprise-grade production systems, including incident management, root cause analysis, and long‑term remediation
• Experience effectively leveraging AI‑assisted development and automation to accelerate the software development lifecycle (SDLC) and improve engineering productivity
• Working knowledge of AI/ML concepts, with hands‑on or applied experience building or enabling AI‑powered tools, accelerators, or platforms within data or engineering ecosystems
• Proven ability to lead, mentor, and manage data engineering teams, driving delivery, accountability, and technical excellence.
• Proven solid analytical and problem‑solving skills, with a demonstrated ability to drive complex issues to resolution across ambiguous and cross‑functional environments
• Proven ability to estimate effort, assess risk, and communicate trade‑offs clearly to technical and non‑technical stakeholders
• Demonstrated capability to operate as a cross‑skilled engineering leader, spanning data engineering, cloud, performance, quality, and operational excellence

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.