Senior Data 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 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.

At UnitedHealth Group and Optum, we want to make healthcare work better for everyone. This depends on hiring the best and brightest. 

With a thriving ecosystem of investment and innovation, our business in Ireland is constantly growing to support the healthcare needs of the future.  

Our teams are at the forefront of building and adapting the latest technologies to propel healthcare forward in a way that better serves everyone. With our hands at work across all aspects of health, we use the most advanced development tools, AI, data science and 
innovative approaches to make the healthcare system work better for everyone.  

Optum Product Engineering Nexus (OPEN) are looking for a Senior Data Engineer who shall implement and operationalise Data pipelines and Data Transformation workloads on Databricks Azure Cloud for a small set of commercial products. The focus for this position will be the development, implementation and maintenance of Data Infra and Data processes on Azure Cloud hosted commercial Products leveraging Health related Data. You should be familiar with data related products and compute choices in the public cloud eco-system and understand how best to secure and manage these services in a high-availability environment. In addition to having an impact on a great Team, you'll 
also discover the career opportunities you'd expect from an industry leader. 

Careers with Optum offer flexible work arrangements and individuals who live and work in the Republic or Ireland will have the opportunity to split their weekly work hours between our Dublin or Letterkenny office and telecommuting from a home-based office.  

Primary Responsibilities:

• Data engineering and pipelines 

• Design, build, test and maintain high-quality, scalable big data solutions, including real-time and near real-time data pipelines 

• Write code and use appropriate tools to transform data, applying business logic defined with Optum business and technology partners 

• Design, build and implement automated processes for the production release of data engineering, machine learning and business intelligence workloads 

• Migrate data from legacy systems to new platforms 

• Design and prototype monitoring models to track pipeline health and data quality 

• Data architecture and governance 

• Analyse raw data sources, transformation needs and structural requirements for new software and applications 

• Design conceptual and logical data models and data flow diagrams 

• Define security and backup strategies for data solutions 

• Produce clear, thorough technical documentation AI-assisted engineering 

• Use AI-assisted development tools (such as Databricks Assistant, GitHub Copilot or equivalent) in day-to-day engineering, including code generation, refactoring, test creation, debugging and documentation 

• Review, validate and take ownership of AI-generated code, ensuring it meets quality, security and maintainability standards before release 

• Coach engineers in the effective and responsible use of AI tooling, and help set team standards and practices for its use 

You will be rewarded and recognised for your performance in an environment that will challenge you and give you clear direction on what it takes to succeed in your role, while providing development opportunities for other roles you may be interested in.

Required Qualifications:

• Experience in a data engineering role working with enterprise data warehouses 
• Hands-on experience with Python and SQL (Java or Scala experience is also beneficial) 
• Experience processing high-volume datasets (100+ million rows) 
• Proven experience implementing ETL applications and applying data warehousing and data modelling 
• principles in large-scale environments 
• Experience with both relational (RDBMS) and non-relational databases 
• Experience with at least one cloud data warehouse, such as Snowflake, Vertica, Amazon Redshift or Azure 

Synapse

• Experience using Spark/Databricks for data processing and machine learning workloads 
• Experience with dbt (data build tool) 
• Experience orchestrating data pipelines with Apache Airflow, including operators and hooks 
• Experience designing, implementing and running data applications with Docker and Kubernetes 
• Working knowledge of public cloud platforms (Azure, AWS or Google Cloud) and of developing applications in 
  

Linux environments

• Knowledge of DevOps tools and practices 
• Experience holding operational responsibility for commercial software products 
• Demonstrable experience of AI-assisted software development, with a clear understanding of the limitations of 
  

AI-generated code

• Experience working in Agile/Scrum teams 

Preferred Qualifications:

• Practical experience developing and hosting solutions on major cloud platforms such as Azure, AWS or Google Cloud
• Experience building OLAP cubes or databases 
• Experience with data modelling methodologies such as Kimball or Data Vault 

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. 

All telecommuters will be required to adhere to the UnitedHealth Group's Telecommuter Policy. 

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.

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.

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.