Director, Data Engineering. Healthcare Economics

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 diversity and inclusion, 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.

As Director - Data Engineering Healthcare Economics at Optum you'll help lead the way on streamlining the flow of information and deliver insights to manage our Consumer Analytics that are focused on making decisions easier for members and help save members on healthcare costs. This specific team will be working on consumer data migration to the cloud and enriching consumer data with new sources to improve accuracy of predictive models and drive organisational efficiencies. You will also be responsible for providing robust data solutions and contribute by creating data strategy plans.

The successful candidate will have proven leadership abilities, collaborate cross-functionally with various business and data analytics teams, have proven data engineering and data analysis experience, and the ability to manage multiple competing projects at one time. Your work will contribute to lowering the overall cost of healthcare for our consumers and helping people live healthier lives.  

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.

What you will do:

• Lead Data Pipeline Development and Ownership: Develop and maintain data pipelines that extract, transform, and load (ETL) data from various sources into a centralized data storage system, such as a data warehouse or data lake. Ensure the smooth flow of data from source systems to destination systems while adhering to data quality and integrity standards
• Drive Data Integration: Integrate data from multiple sources and systems, including databases, APIs, log files, streaming platforms, and external data providers. Handle data ingestion, transformation, and consolidation to create a unified and reliable data foundation for analysis and reporting
• Lead Data Transformation and Processing: Develop data transformation routines to clean, normalize, and aggregate data. Apply data processing techniques to handle complex data structures, handle missing or inconsistent data, and prepare the data for analysis, reporting, or machine learning tasks
• Contribute to common frameworks and best practices in code development, deployment, and automation/orchestration of data pipelines  
• Drive and implement data governance in line with company standards
• Drive monitoring and support for data pipelines and data systems to detect and resolve issues promptly. Develop monitoring tools, alerts, and automated error handling mechanisms to ensure data integrity and system reliability

You will 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 providing development for other roles you may be interested in.

What you will bring:

If you don't meet every single requirement, don't let that hold you back - we're just as excited about potential as we are about qualifications and experience, and you could be exactly who we're looking for.  

• Proven significant experience managing high performance team (directly responsible for performance or influence without authority)  
• Proven expert level hands-on experience developing data pipelines that demonstrate a solid understanding of software engineering principles  
• Demonstrated clear understanding and hands on experience with cloud technologies and large data sets
• Demonstrated depth of proficiency in SQL and experience with object-oriented / object functional scripting language: Python, R
• Demonstrated understanding of DevOps tools, Git workflow and building CI/CD pipelines  
• Demonstrated solid senior leadership communication skills, able to work with stakeholders from multiple levels and disciplines
• Demonstrated effective large scale project ownership, management, drive & delivery  

Other useful skills and experience include: 

• Proven experience with Snowflake or Databricks  
• Proven hands-on experience of developing big data processes using big data tools - Spark, Hadoop, Kafka, etc.     
• Proven experience in ETL / ELT tools
• Proven experience in orchestration tools ADF / Airflow
• Proven experience building data pipelines on either AWS, Azure or GCP, following best practices in Cloud deployments  
• Proven experience working in projects with agile/scrum methodologies  
• Proven experience with shell scripting languages  
• Proven experience working with both real-time and batch data, knowing the strengths and weaknesses of both and when to apply one over another  
• Proven experience working within technical and business professionals in a matrix management environment  
• Demonstrated ability to work with business and technical audiences on business requirement meetings, technical white boarding exercises, and SQL coding/debugging sessions  

What We Offer: 

• Opportunities for professional development   
• Inclusive and supportive team culture   
• Key benefits: Private health insurance, wellness programs, matching pension contribution, lunch provided by the company, training opportunities, employee donations matching and others

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.  

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.


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. © 2026 Optum Services (Ireland) Limited. All rights reserved.

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