Senior Manager User Experience

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.

Optum Payment Integrity is seeking a Principal Product Designer (Team Lead) to lead a team of UX team members while actively contributing to the delivery of high-quality, user-centered experiences across complex, data-driven products.

This role blends people leadership, design execution, and cross-functional alignment, ensuring that work is well-scoped, consistently delivered, and aligned to both user needs and business outcomes.

As a hands-on leader, you will operate in a player-coach capacity, guiding the team, stepping into critical work when needed, and elevating overall design quality and team effectiveness. You will also bring AI fluency, helping the team adopt modern tools to accelerate delivery, improve insight generation, and streamline workflows.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Ensure high-quality execution across all design work (user flows, interactions, UI patterns, and system behaviors)
• Step in to provide hands-on design support for complex, high-risk, or ambiguous work
• Guide teams in breaking down work into clear, actionable deliverables
• Ensure design outputs are development-ready, with clear specifications, assets, and acceptance criteria
• Maintain a solid focus on usability, accessibility, and experience consistency
• Guide team members in adopting AI responsibly and effectively within their day-to-day work
• Cross-Functional Collaboration
  • Serve as a central point of coordination across Product, Engineering, and Design
  • Align teams on scope, priorities, timelines, and dependencies
  • Facilitate design reviews, working sessions, and cross-team critiques
  • Proactively identify and resolve gaps, blockers, and misalignment
  • Communicate design decisions and rationale effectively to stakeholders at all
• 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 regard 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:

• 11+ years of experience in Product Design, UX, Interaction Design, or related disciplines
• 2+ years of direct people management or design team leadership
• Solid visual and interaction design skills (layout, hierarchy, usability)
• Proven experience leading design delivery within cross-functional product teams

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in enterprise or regulated domains (e.g., healthcare, fintech, or analytics platforms)
• Experience working with and scaling design systems
• Experience working with analytics, data visualization, and reporting
• Familiarity with Agile, PI planning, or similar delivery models
• Familiarity with accessibility standards (WCAG)
• Background in UX research, usability testing, or data-informed design practices
• Tools & Skills:
  • Design & Collaboration
    • Figma, Miro, Mural for synthesis and workshops
    • Collaboration tools: Teams, Confluence, SharePoint
  • Collaboration & Communication
    • Solid communication, facilitation, and stakeholder management skills across cross-functional teams
    • Ability to bring clarity and structure in ambiguous or rapidly evolving environments
    • Proven experience partnering closely with Product and Engineering leadership
  • AI & Modern Tools
    • Familiarity with AI-assisted design, research, and productivity tools
    • Demonstrated interest in leveraging AI to improve:
      • Design workflows and efficiency
      • Research synthesis and insight generation
      • Team productivity, delivery speed, and overall effectiveness

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.