Principal AI Architect

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.

Optum is seeking a visionary Digital AI architect for our Contract Center Transformation.  The successful candidate will play a critical role in transforming our voice and digital experiences to conversational experiences, through multiple engagement channels (including web, app, chat, voice, and search), with a particular emphasis on transforming how consumers engage in the US health care system.  In this role you will help make UnitedHealth Group's consumer obsessed digital vision come to life by using AI to deliver our next generation Conversational Experiences. Define and lead the strategic vision, architecture, and implementation of AI contact solutions across our consumer-facing digital experiences.  Partner closely with business and product teams to identify and prioritize strategic opportunities for leveraging AI within web, mobile, chat messaging, voice messaging, and search channels. Oversee the development of scalable, secure, and innovative AI solutions designed to enhance consumer engagement and deliver personalized, intuitive self-service experiences that transform our current digital experiences into conversational experiences.

You'll enjoy the flexibility to work remotely * from anywhere within the U.S. as you take on some tough challenges. For all hires in the Minneapolis or Washington, D.C. area, you will be required to work in the office a minimum of four days per week.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Own the end-to-end technical architecture for conversational voice AI systems, including voice bot orchestration, memory/context handling, backend integrations, agent handoff, and quality feedback loops
• Design and implement voice bot architectures for natural language self-service, including multi-turn conversations, fulfillment, fallback, escalation, and smooth transitions to human-assisted experiences
• Define architecture patterns for STT/TTS, V2V (voice-to-voice), and hybrid voice interaction models, including tradeoffs in latency, controllability, grounding, observability, interruption handling, and user experience
• Design and implement reasoning-enabled voice bot architectures, including policy-controlled tool use, grounding/validation, fallback behavior, and escalation patterns
• Define and implement multi-bot / multi-agent orchestration patterns for voice, including dispatcher, orchestrator, domain-bot, and escalation models
• Define approaches for session memory, context propagation, authentication context, and conversation continuity across bots, backend systems, and live agents
• Establish voice guardrail patterns including policy enforcement, safe fallback behavior, hallucination/grounding controls, redaction/governance, escalation rules, and compliance-aware protections
• Define telemetry, observability, and evaluation patterns for conversational voice systems, including latency, recognition quality, interruption/barge-in behavior, drop-offs, failure rates, containment, transcript quality, and task completion
• Design integration patterns between voice bot systems and enterprise platforms such as identity, CRM, customer profile, case management, knowledge systems, and downstream APIs/services
• Design voice architectures that cleanly separate conversation intelligence from telephony/platform concerns while still supporting reliable context transfer and operational continuity
• Apply technologies such as SIP, WebRTC, WebSocket, APIs, and event-driven services where appropriate to support real-time voice interactions and downstream voice bot integrations
• Lead design reviews, publish reusable patterns and standards, mentor engineers, and influence technical direction across voice initiatives
• Partner closely with Product, Engineering, Security, Operations, and telephony/platform teams to translate business outcomes into scalable technical designs

You'll 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 provide development for other roles you may be interested in.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience
• 5+ years of experience designing and delivering voice bot, conversational voice AI, IVR, or customer-facing voice automation solutions in production environments
• 3+ years of hands-on experience designing or implementing conversational voice systems, including one or more of the following: STT/TTS pipelines, V2V systems, multi-turn voice interactions, bot orchestration, session memory/context, or escalation to human agents
• 3+ years of experience with modern voice integration technologies or protocols such as SIP, WebRTC, WebSocket, telephony integration, or signaling/media handling
• 3+ years of experience designing conversational/self-service voice experiences, including intent handling, fallback/escalation design, and context transfer between automation and human-assisted channels
• 3+ years of experience with one or more of the following: voice memory/context handling, multi-bot orchestration, reasoning bots, voice guardrails, voice telemetry/evaluations, downstream voice integration patterns, or protocol tradeoffs
• Experience evaluating tradeoffs between deterministic voice flows, reasoning-enabled bots, domain-specific bots, and human escalation paths
• Experience with AI in engineering workflows, including standards, guardrails, reusable prompts/patterns, and evaluation/quality checks
• Demonstrated ability to produce architecture/design artifacts, lead technical workshops, mentor engineers, and influence cross-functional stakeholders
• Proven solid troubleshooting mindset with demonstrated ownership of production support and root cause analysis for customer-facing voice systems

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience designing voice systems where the telephony/routing platform is distinct from the downstream bot, orchestration, or AI layers
• Experience with reasoning-enabled voice agents, grounded tool use, and policy-controlled action execution
• Experience designing V2V / speech-to-speech systems with low-latency streaming, natural turn-taking, and interruption/barge-in handling
• Experience with speech analytics, transcript analysis, redaction/governance, or voice quality evaluation frameworks
• Experience with data pipelines and telemetry patterns for voice quality, reporting, evaluation, and conversational analytics
• Experience embedding or integrating live agent workflows with contextual handoff from voice automation systems
• Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code and CI/CD for cloud platform delivery
• Experience operating in regulated or high-compliance environments and designing for privacy-by-default, encryption, auditability, and retention controls
• Proven ability to architect cross-channel experiences that unify voice, chat, and human-assisted workflows while minimizing customer effort

*All employees working remotely will be required to adhere to UnitedHealth Group's Telecommuter Policy

Pay is based on several factors including but not limited to local labor markets, education, work experience, certifications, etc. In addition to your salary, we offer benefits such as, a comprehensive benefits package, incentive and recognition programs, equity stock purchase and 401k contribution (all benefits are subject to eligibility requirements). No matter where or when you begin a career with us, you'll find a far-reaching choice of benefits and incentives. The salary for this role will range from $134,600 to $230,800 annually based on full-time employment. We comply with all minimum wage laws as applicable.

Application Deadline: This will be posted for a minimum of 2 business days or until a sufficient candidate pool has been collected. Job posting may come down early due to volume of applicants.

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.    

UnitedHealth Group is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer under applicable law and qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, national origin, religion, age, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by local, state, or federal laws, rules, or regulations.

UnitedHealth Group is a drug - free workplace. Candidates are required to pass a drug test before beginning employment.