Lead AI Software Engineer - Remote

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.

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:

• Lead the architecture, design, and delivery of production grade AI/ML and Generative AI solutions within the OQGA platform, including classification, forecasting, NLP, deep learning, and LLM powered applications that improve platform efficiency, automation, and engineering productivity
• Design and implement scalable batch and API based data pipelines within OQGA, working with large healthcare and quality related datasets; develop high quality, well tested Java, Python (pandas, NumPy), and SQL code aligned to enterprise standards
• Build and deploy LLM based capabilities including prompt engineering, fine tuning, Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), vector indexing, evaluation frameworks, and safety/guardrails, ensuring solutions are secure, auditable, and production ready
• Establish and drive LLMOps and DevOps best practices for OQGA, including CI/CD for AI and platform services, model and prompt versioning, experiment tracking, monitoring, drift detection, A/B testing, and cost and performance optimization
• Partner closely with senior engineers, architects, and engineering leadership to define technical strategy, system design, and implementation approaches for AI enabled and core OQGA platform capabilities
• Translate business and platform requirements into robust AI and system architectures, recommending alternative technical approaches to balance accuracy, scalability, cost, compliance, and time to market
• Collaborate with Product, QA, and Operations teams on requirements definition, solution design, estimation, and delivery planning, ensuring alignment with OQGA priorities and Agile practices
• Ensure operational excellence by building, deploying, monitoring, and operating highly available OQGA services across DEV, TEST, UAT/UATP, STAGE, and PROD environments, including incident leadership, RCA, and continuous improvement
• Set and enforce engineering standards and best practices for code quality, documentation, testing, security, and responsible AI development, delivering high quality solutions under tight timelines while mentoring and guiding engineers across the OQGA team

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:

• Bachelor's degree with 10+ years, Master's with 8+ years, or PhD with minimum 3+ years of progressively responsible experience in AI/ML, applied data science, or advanced software engineering roles, including ownership of production systems
• 8+ years of hands on experience with Python, including strong proficiency with modern AI/ML libraries and a demonstrated ability to write production quality, secure, and maintainable code
• 6+ years of experience with Java, including building and operating enterprise grade services using frameworks such as Spring / Spring Boot, with a strong understanding of performance, reliability, and scalability
• Experience working with vector databases and LLM orchestration frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, or LlamaIndex
• Hands on experience delivering production grade machine learning, deep learning, and Generative AI solutions in complex, regulated environments
• Familiarity with the Hugging Face ecosystem, including model selection, fine tuning, inference optimization, and performance tuning techniques
• Proven solid fundamentals in machine learning, statistics, probability, and experimental design, with the ability to apply these concepts to real world, enterprise scale problems
• Proven expertise with large language models (LLMs), embeddings, Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures, fine tuning strategies, and model evaluation frameworks
• Demonstrated experience designing, building, and operating scalable, cloud native AI systems on Azure, including deployment automation and cost optimization
• Proven solid software engineering practices, including Git based version control, CI/CD pipelines, peer code reviews, testing strategies, and secure development standards
• Proven ability to influence technical direction, set engineering standards, mentor engineers, and collaborate effectively across engineering, product, QA, and operations teams

*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 $112,700    to $193,200 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.