Associate AI/ML 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 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.    

AI/ML Engineers code and develop software that deploys ML models and algorithms in production. Communicate and present complex analytics results and concepts to leadership and internal stakeholders. Employee AI and/or ML that may include natural language processing (NLP), natural language understanding (NLU), semantic understanding, intent classification, computer vision, deep learning, and automatic speech recognition (ASR). Applies deep learning technologies to give computers that capability to visualize, learn and respond to complex situations. May adapt machine learning to areas such as artificial intelligence, robotics and other products that allow users to have an interactive experience. Work with large scale computing frameworks, data analysis systems. Employees in this role are expected to apply knowledge of experimental methodologies, statistics, optimization, probability theory and machine learning using code for tool building, statistical analysis, using both general purpose software and statistical languages. AI/ML Applied Scientists specialize in advancing and applying artificial intelligence through research-driven, experimental research, and translate research findings into practical AI solutions for the organization. Basic, structured, standard approach to work.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Generative AI & LLM Development
• Assist in designing and developing GenAI based applications using Large Language Models (LLMs)
• Implement prompt engineering, prompt chaining, and basic fine tuning techniques under guidance
• Evaluate LLM outputs for quality, safety, hallucination risks, and performance
• RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation)
• Build and maintain RAG pipelines by integrating LLMs with document stores and vector databases
• Assist in data ingestion, chunking strategies, embedding generation, and retrieval evaluation
• Work on use cases such as chat with documents, enterprise search, and knowledge assistants
• Agentic AI
• Contribute to the development of AI agents capable of tool use, multi step reasoning, and workflow orchestration
• Implement simple autonomous or semi autonomous agents using agent frameworks under supervision
• Help define agent goals, constraints, and guardrails
• Software Engineering & Integration
• Develop react native , ReactJs, Node services and APIs to expose AI capabilities to applications
• Write clean, testable Python code following software engineering best practices
• Participate in code reviews, testing, and debugging of AI systems
• Data & Model Operations
• Assist with data preparation for structured and unstructured datasets
• Support experimentation, benchmarking, and comparison of GenAI approaches
• Follow responsible AI practices, including secure handling of sensitive data (PII/PHI)
• What You Will Learn
• Building production grade GenAI systems, not just demos
• Designing agent based workflows for real business use cases
• Applying RAG patterns to enterprise knowledge and documents
• Working within an AI first software development lifecycle
• Best practices for safe, reliable, and scalable AI solutions
• Comply with the terms and conditions of the employment contract, company policies and procedures, and any and all directives (such as, but not limited to, transfer and/or re-assignment to different work locations, change in teams and/or work shifts, policies in regards to flexibility of work benefits and/or work environment, alternative work arrangements, and other decisions that may arise due to the changing business environment). The Company may adopt, vary or rescind these policies and directives in its absolute discretion and without any limitation (implied or otherwise) on its ability to do so

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, AI, Data Science, or related field
• Experience with React.js / React Native and Node.js for building applications and APIs
• Experience in data preparation
• Working knowledge of prompt engineering, prompt chaining, and basic fine-tuning
• Knowledge of building use cases like document Q&A, enterprise search, or chat assistants
• Basic understanding of Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs)
• Understanding of data ingestion, chunking strategies, and document processing
• Basic understanding of AI agents, tool usage, and multi-step reasoning workflows
• Understanding of software development practices including testing, debugging, and version control
• Familiarity with RAG concepts including embeddings, vector databases, and retrieval techniques
• Familiarity with agent frameworks such as LangChain, AutoGen, or similar
• Proficiency in Python for AI/ML development
• Proven ability to evaluate LLM outputs for quality, hallucination, and safety risks
• Proven exposure to tools like FAISS, Pinecone, Weaviate, or similar vector stores
• Proven ability to write clean, testable, and maintainable code

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.