Lead Full Stack 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.

The Lead Full Stack Engineer is responsible for leading the design, development, modernization, and delivery of scalable, secure, and high-performing enterprise web applications. Located in Pune, this role requires hands-on technical leadership across backend services, reactive programming models, modern micro-frontends, and DevOps automation. In this role, you will leverage enterprise-approved AI-assisted development tools to accelerate delivery, optimize workflows, and automate tasks. Leading an agile team of engineers, you will drive modernization efforts (such as upgrading legacy applications to Java 21), optimize system performance, standardize Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and ensure seamless, high-availability cloud deployments.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Use enterprise-approved AI tools to streamline workflows, automate tasks, and drive continuous improvement
• Evaluate emerging trends to inform solution design and strategic innovation
• Lead end-to-end design and development of full-stack enterprise applications using Java, Spring Boot, Spring WebFlux, Spring Gateway, GraphQL, React, and modern microservices
• Define backend architecture for scalable, secure, and high-availability systems supporting enterprise workloads
• Develop and maintain RESTful APIs, GraphQL services, API gateway integrations, and secure service-to-service communication patterns
• Lead frontend development using React, Vite, and micro-frontend architecture to support modular and independently deployable UI applications
• Guide and mentor software engineers through code reviews, design discussions, best practices, and technical problem-solving
• Modernize legacy systems, including upgrades from older Java versions to Java 21 and adoption of reactive programming models
• Implement performance optimization strategies using Redis caching, in-memory toggles, database tuning, and efficient API design
• Design and integrate event-driven systems using Kafka, including topic configuration, access control, cloud migration, and latency optimization
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions, including automated testing, code quality checks, security scans, and deployment workflows
• Deploy and manage applications using Docker, Kubernetes, Helm charts, and cloud-native deployment practices
• Create and maintain reusable Terraform modules to standardize Infrastructure as Code across environments
• Identify, remediate, and prevent application security vulnerabilities including CSRF, log injection, and other high-priority security issues
• Collaborate with product owners, architects, QA engineers, DevOps teams, and stakeholders in Agile/Scrum environments
• Monitor production systems using tools such as Grafana, Kibana, Dynatrace, and related observability platforms
• Perform root-cause analysis for production incidents and implement long-term fixes to improve system reliability
• Ensure application quality through unit testing, integration testing, mocking, test containers, and automated quality gates
• Support healthcare, enterprise data management, or similar regulated platforms requiring secure data handling, auditability, and compliance-focused engineering practices
• 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 or equivalent professional experience
• 6+ years of professional software development experience with full-stack application development
• 4+ years of hands-on experience developing backend microservices with Java and Spring Boot
• 3+ years of experience with frontend development using React and modern build/packaging tools (e.g., Vite)
• 2+ years of experience with reactive programming frameworks (e.g., Spring WebFlux) and modern Java versions (Java 17 or Java 21)
• 2+ years of experience with containerization, orchestration, and Infrastructure as Code (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes, Helm, Terraform)
• 2+ years of experience integrating event-driven systems (e.g., Kafka) and distributed caching systems (e.g., Redis)
• 2+ years of experience building and automating CI/CD pipelines (e.g., GitHub Actions) and utilizing code security/quality gateways (e.g., SonarQube)
• 2+ years of experience leading technical implementation efforts, conducting code reviews, and mentoring software engineers

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience working in healthcare, enterprise data platforms, preference management systems, or regulated application environments
• Experience building secure applications that handle sensitive user, healthcare, or enterprise data
• Experience improving system performance, uptime, responsiveness, and production reliability
• Experience migrating legacy systems to cloud-native or modern reactive architectures
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools (such as GitHub Copilot or Claude) to accelerate engineering delivery
• Basic working knowledge of AWS or similar cloud platforms
• Proven solid communication and collaborative leadership skills, with the ability to collaborate across engineering, product, QA, DevOps, and business stakeholder groups

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.

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