Director Architecture - Remote

Optum Tech is a global leader in health care innovation. Our teams develop cutting-edge solutions that help people live healthier lives and help make the health system work better for everyone. From advanced data analytics and AI to cybersecurity, we use innovative approaches to solve some of health care's most complex challenges. Your contributions here have the potential to change lives. Ready to build the next breakthrough? Join us to start Caring. Connecting. Growing together.

The Director of Architecture for Agentic AI Claims Automation will serve as the principal technical leader driving the architectural vision, solution design, and AI first innovation strategy for next generation claims automation capabilities within the Claims GCO organization. This role will define and mature the architecture for a platform that enables cross domain agentic workflows, orchestrates intelligent automation patterns, and aligns with the broader enterprise AI/ML strategy.

As a senior member of the Architecture job family, this individual will provide deep technical leadership across product, engineering, enterprise architecture, data science, and operations teams. They will ensure architectural consistency, guide adoption of emerging AI capabilities, and establish standards that accelerate delivery while safeguarding resilience, performance, governance, and reusability. The Director will mentor architects and engineers and act as a trusted advisor to business and technology stakeholders, influencing decisions through technical depth and strategic clarity.

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:

• Define and evolve the end to end architecture for the Agentic AI Claims Automation platform, including agent orchestration, workflow engines, integration layers, data pipelines, and model serving components
• Establish architectural patterns and guardrails that support reusable agentic workflows across claims platforms and operations
• Partner with enterprise architecture to ensure alignment with emerging enterprise frameworks, AI governance standards, reference architectures, and shared platforms
• Create and communicate a clear architectural north star, including strategic technology choices, trade offs, and modernization priorities
• Design platform capabilities that enable the development, deployment, monitoring, and lifecycle management of agentic systems and multi agent workflows
• Collaborate with AI/ML and data science teams to define scalable patterns for model integration, retrieval augmented generation (RAG), decision logic, and safety filters
• Champion "AI first" design principles across engineering teams, including intelligent automation, human in the loop review, observability, and bias mitigation
• Lead architectural direction for major Claims GCO transformation initiatives, ensuring business objectives translate into robust, scalable, and cost efficient designs
• Provide architectural governance throughout program lifecycle (concept to delivery to operations), including solution reviews, risk identification, and technical dependency management
• Mentor architects and senior engineers to elevate technical design skills, architectural thinking, and AI literacy
• Inspire teams through thought leadership on emerging technologies, agentic AI trends, and industry best practices in intelligent automation and claims transformation
• Act as a trusted advisor to product leaders, business executives, and technology stakeholders across Claims, GCO, and enterprise platforms
• Translate complex architectural concepts into clear, business aligned narratives to drive buy in and informed decision making
• Present architectural recommendations, solution options, and technical trade offs at senior leadership forums
• Partner with reliability, platform engineering, and security teams to ensure availability, performance, compliance, and resilience of AI services and claims automation platforms
• Identify architectural improvements that enhance reliability, observability, cost efficiency, and developer productivity
• Evaluate new technologies and lead pilot efforts to assess applicability within claims automation and agentic AI patterns

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:

• 7+ years of experience in software solution architecture, with a focus on AI/ML systems
• 7+ years of experience architecting scalable platforms and microservices, including RESTful API design and cloud-native development
• 3+ years of experience communicating architectural vision and strategy across cross-functional teams
• 3+ years of experience with cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP) and data integration tools
• 1+ years of experience with AI/ML concepts including responsible AI principles, multi-agent solutions, generative AI, MCP and A2A
• 1+ years of experience with MLOps tools for deploying and managing models in production
• 1+ years of experience designing agentic workflows or autonomous systems

Preferred Qualifications: 

• Bachelor's in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field
• 1+ years of experience integrating AI solutions into existing enterprise systems while ensuring alignment with evolving architecture standards
• Health industry experience 
• Payer background

*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.