Principal I O Engineering - Remote or Hybrid in MN or DC

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. Caome 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.

The Optum Technology Digital team is on a mission to disrupt the healthcare industry, transforming UHG into an industry-leading Consumer brand. We deliver hyper-personalized digital solutions that empower direct-to-consumer, digital-first experiences, educating, guiding, and empowering consumers to access the right care at the right time. Our mission is to revolutionize healthcare for patients and providers by delivering cutting-edge, personalized and conversational digital solutions. We're Consumer Obsessed, ensuring they receive exceptional support throughout their healthcare journeys. As we drive this transformation, we're revolutionizing customer interactions with the healthcare system, leveraging AI, cloud computing, and other disruptive technologies to tackle complex challenges. Serving UnitedHealth Group's digital technology needs, the Consumer Engineering team impacts millions of lives through UnitedHealthcare & Optum.

The Optum Technology Chief Digital Office (CDO) Leadership team is transforming Optum to be an industry-leading Consumer brand. We are on a journey towards delivering a best-in-the-industry consumer experience to our patients and providers by delivering personalized digital solutions that support our consumers throughout their healthcare journeys. This team is transforming to meet the moment - to begin radically altering the way our customers engage with the healthcare system using modern tech to solve some of the most complex problems experienced along the way.

Serving all of UnitedHealth Group's digital technology needs, the CDO team is responsible for driving outcomes across nearly 30 million+ human lives with UnitedHealthcare insurance, a number which puts UHC at the top of the pack as the largest managed care provider in the United States.

You'll enjoy the flexibility to work remotely * from anywhere within the U.S. as you take on some tough challenges.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Technical Leadership & Strategy
  • Set direction for future technologies and partner with application teams to develop technology roadmaps
  • Develop proof-of-concepts for new products and define centers of excellence
  • Anticipate and proactively improve systems and future designs for increased performance and availability
  • Develop strategy for infrastructure/platform lifecycle management and resource forecasting
  • Research emerging technologies, evaluate feasibility, and recommend solutions that deliver business value
• Infrastructure & Platform Management
  • Write integrated automation code at an expert level across multiple platforms
  • Articulate technical trade-offs of different IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS designs
  • Build instrumentation and diagnostics demonstrating business value of the CI/CD chain
  • Lead strategy development for DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering practices
  • Consult on technology solutions meeting security, scalability, reliability, and feasibility requirements
• AI Builder & Development
  • Design, develop, and deploy AI/ML pipelines and infrastructure to support enterprise AI initiatives
  • Build and maintain AI tooling, frameworks, and platforms that enable teams to develop and deploy AI solutions
  • Implement and optimize AI feature stores, model registries, and MLOps workflows
  • Integrate AI capabilities into existing infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines
  • Evaluate and implement AI-powered automation tools to enhance operational efficiency
• Collaborate with data science teams to productionize ML models at scale
  • Develop monitoring and observability solutions for AI/ML systems performance and drift detection
  • Collaboration & Mentorship
  • Serve as an escalation point for complex issues, problems, and solutions
  • Provide guidance, assistance, and consultation to engineering teams (SME, mentor)
  • Translate technical concepts into business terms for stakeholders
  • Lead collaborative efforts to advance customer and business interests
  • Coach others on troubleshooting skills and develop troubleshooting guides
• Security & Quality
  • Champion compliance with security standards and regulations
  • Proactively identify and address security gaps in solution design and delivery
  • Research security trends and emerging threats; incorporate findings into solutions
  • Lead quality improvement processes and drive a quality culture by example
  • Partner with stakeholders to develop secured products using DevSecOps principles

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:

• 8+ years in infrastructure/operations engineering or related field
• 5+ years of experience in infrastructure platforms (compute, storage, networking, virtualization)
• 5+ years of experience in automation and infrastructure-as-code
• 5+ years of experience with container orchestration (Kubernetes, etc.)
• Experience with monitoring, observability, and SRE practices
• Hands-on experience with AI/ML platforms and tools (e.g., Anthropic, OpenAI, Amazon Bedrock, etc.)
• Understanding of CI/CD pipelines and deployment automation
• Proficiency in public and private cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP)

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience defining and driving observability metrics and SLOs
• Experience with capacity optimization and resource forecasting
• Experience with LLM integration, prompt engineering, and generative AI tooling
• Experience with vector databases and RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) architectures
• Experience building and maintaining ML pipelines and MLOps infrastructure
• Knowledge of AI governance, model monitoring, and responsible AI practices
• Familiarity with multiple IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS service offerings
• Familiarity with AI feature engineering, model deployment, and serving architectures
• Proven background in developing DevSecOps culture and practices
• Proven history of contributing to internal/external tech communities (open source, best practices)
• Proven ability to communicate and negotiate direction with executive leadership
• Proven solid analytical skills-drawing correlations from non-standard data sets
• Demonstrated experience leading technical initiatives across multiple teams
• Proven track record of developing and implementing technology strategies

*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 $112,700    to $193,200 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.