Director Data Science

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.

About the Role: 

UnitedHealthcare is expanding our data science presence in Ireland. We are hiring a Director of Data Science to lead our AI Enablement team, a highly technical group focused on accelerating the delivery of high-quality AI and data science solutions across the organization. 

This role is for a proven people leader who can run a technical team, build solid stakeholder relationships, balance multiple business priorities and translate strategy into execution. You will set direction, coach and grow talent, establish standards and ways of working, and partner with multiple internal business, data and engineering leaders to scale dependable, production ready data science & AI solutions.

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.

Primary Responsibilities:

Own the AI Enablement strategy and execution plan:

• Define the team's mission, operating model, and delivery roadmap aligned to enterprise priorities
• Balance near-term delivery needs with longer-term platform and capability build

Drive stakeholder alignment and executive communication:

• Partner with senior business and technical leaders to understand priority opportunities
• Communicate progress, risks, trade-offs, and outcomes clearly to leadership 
• Drive decisions, encourage alignment and influence without authority

Lead and develop a high-performing team:

• Coach and retain talent; provide guidance, set clear direction
• Create an inclusive, high-accountability culture with solid engineering discipline

Establish scalable standards and reusable patterns for delivery:

• Define best practices for experimentation, validation, documentation, monitoring, and reproducibility
• Build and communicate templates and architectures that accelerate our data science evolution
• Partner successfully with Data Engineering and Platform teams
• Enable production ready implementation of advanced analytics solutions
• Help teams move from prototype to production through robust testing, communication, and operational handoffs
• Support responsible use of modern AI capabilities, without over-indexing on "AI"
• Establish practical guidance for LLM-assisted workflows, including prompt standards, evaluation, and safe usage patterns
• Ensure governance expectations are met

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.

Required Qualifications:

• Undergraduate degree in a quantitative field such as mathematics, actuarial science, statistics, computer science, engineering, or a related discipline
• Proven significant people management experience leading technical teams (data science, analytics, ML engineering, or similar)
• Demonstrated stakeholder management experience with senior leaders, including influencing priorities and driving alignment across multiple teams
• Demonstrated solid hands on background in data science and analytics, with an enthusiasm to dive into the details and sound judgment on when that level of involvement is needed
• Demonstrated solid software and data engineering mindset, including production thinking, code quality, testing, documentation, and operationalization
• Demonstrated excellent communication skills, with the ability to translate complex topics into clear concepts and drive decision making through actionable recommendations
• Demonstrated familiarity with modern cloud data stacks and production analytics patterns (batch/streaming, orchestration, monitoring)

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master's degree, PhD in a quantitative field or relevant professional qualification

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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