Senior Data Scientist

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.  

Primary Responsibilities:

• End-to-End Data Pipeline Engineering: Architect, build, and maintain scalable, reliable, and secure ETL/ELT pipelines to ingest and process massive, complex datasets. Implement enterprise Lakehouse architectures using the Databricks or Snowflake Medallion Framework (Bronze, Silver, Gold zones)
• Predictive Analytics & Advanced Modelling: Formulate, train, validate, and deploy production-grade machine learning models to solve critical operational and strategic business challenges
• AI Engineering & Autonomous Systems: Design, build, and optimize enterprise Generative AI systems, Multi-Agent autonomous workflows, and advanced Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) applications
• Big Data Processing (Python/Scala): Write high-performance, distributed code using PySpark or Scala Spark to transform petabyte-scale structured and unstructured data, ensuring optimal cluster configuration and resource management
• Advanced SQL Development: Write highly intricate SQL queries, window functions, and dynamic transformations optimized for Databricks SQL Warehouses, performance tuning
• Core Technical Skill Set
• Data Engineering & Big Data (The Foundation)
  • Databricks or Snowflake Ecosystem: Deep fluency in Unity Catalog, Delta Lake storage management, Delta Live Tables, and access controls
  • Core Languages: Advanced programming skills in Python and/or Scala applied to distributed computing
  • Distributed Processing & SQL: Expert-level Spark Core/Spark SQL optimization, memory management tuning, and troubleshooting data skewness. Expert in complex ANSI SQL/T-SQL syntax
• Predictive Analytics & Machine Learning (The Intelligence)
  • ML Ecosystem: Deep familiarity with Predictive Analytics & Machine Learning libraries
  • Feature Engineering: Building reusable features via Databricks Feature Store to guarantee parity between training and real-time serving pipelines
• AI Engineering & Production Operations (The Cutting Edge)
  • GenAI Frameworks: Strong hands-on experience with LLM APIs, Vector Search Engines and agent orchestration toolkits
• Collaborate with research, engineering, and product teams to translate cutting-edge AI advancements into production-ready capabilities. Uphold ethical AI principles by embedding fairness, transparency, and accountability throughout the model development lifecycle
• Comply with all applicable Company policies, procedures, and business directives, changes including those relating to work location, team assignments, work schedules, and flexible work arrangements

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Statistics, Mathematics, or an equivalent technical/quantitative discipline
• 6+ years of professional hands-on experience covering Data Engineering, Data Science, and AI/Software Engineering
• 2+ years specialized within the Predictive Modelling
• Cloud Platform: Experience with data processing, storage and retrieval services on Azure Cloud platform
• Cloud Platform: Experience with data processing, storage and retrieval services on Azure Cloud platform
• Enterprise-scale Data Engineering experience
• Experience handling large-scale data environments
• Solid Databricks or Snowflake implementation experience
• Experience with Bronze, Silver, Gold layers (Medallion Architecture)
• Proven to build end-to-end ETL/ELT pipelines
• Proven solid software-engineering approach to data science & engineering. Prioritize AI, data quality, code scalability, testing, and continuous integration over manual notebook experimentation

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.