Principal Software Engineer - Cloud

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.    

Principal Software Engineer is a senior technical leader responsible for defining architecture, system design, and engineering direction across complex enterprise systems. This role drives cross-team technical decisions, platform standardization, and end-to-end software lifecycle ownership, ensuring scalable, secure, and reliable solutions. The role requires strong understanding of AI/ML concepts and their application in real-world systems, alongside deep expertise in software engineering fundamentals and distributed system design.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Architecture & Design
  • Lead design of distributed, scalable systems and microservices architectures
  • Define service boundaries, APIs, and integration patterns (event-driven, async)
• Technical Leadership
  • Act as technical authority for architecture and complex problem-solving
  • Influence engineering decisions across teams without formal authority
• Engineering Standards & Platforms
  • Establish reusable patterns, standards, and shared components
  • Drive adoption of modern engineering practices and automation-first mindset
• Cloud & Distributed Systems
  • Drive cloud-native solutions across AWS / Azure / GCP
  • Lead microservices, containerisation (Docker, Kubernetes), and platform engineering
• DevOps & Delivery Excellence
  • Lead CI/CD pipelines, release automation, and deployment reliability
  • Improve engineering productivity through standardised tooling and automation
• Reliability & Observability
  • Ensure production readiness via monitoring, logging, tracing, alerting
  • Drive diagnostics and operational excellence practices
• Decision-Making & Problem Solving
  • Make high-impact technical decisions under ambiguity
  • Balance scalability, reliability, security, and delivery trade-offs
• 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:

• Experience with:
  • Cloud platforms (AWS / Azure / GCP)
  • Containers & Kubernetes (preferred)
  • CI/CD and DevOps tooling
• Solid understanding of:
  • Scalability, performance, and reliability
  • Observability and production troubleshooting
  • Secure software engineering practices
  • Experience with AI/ML or Conversational systems
  • Exposure to contact centre platforms or enterprise integrations
• Solid expertise in:
  • System design & distributed systems
  • Microservices and event-driven architectures
  • API design and integration patterns
  • Proficiency in one or more languages (e.g., Java, Python, Go)

Leadership Competencies:

• Influences technical direction across teams
• Strong problem-solving in ambiguous environments
• Effective stakeholder communication (technical & business)
• Mentors engineers and drives engineering excellence

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.