Senior Data Engineer - Remote in Canada

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.

For more than 20 years, we've supported global healthcare systems from Ireland and the UK, growing into a dynamic team of 2,100+ talented individuals. As we continue our strong record of stability and growth, we're expanding the Stratus Imaging Analytics team-building analytics solutions for our Enterprise Imaging portfolio with customers across Europe, Canada, and the United States. In this role, you'll join our Canada-based capability (working remotely within Canada) while collaborating day-to-day with a team that is primarily based in Ireland. We're looking for a Senior Data Engineer who is passionate about delivering real customer value while driving innovation and continuous improvement. If you're motivated by using data and analytics to help improve healthcare, we'd love to hear from you.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Design, develop and maintain data pipelines, to ingest, transform, and store healthcare data from various enterprise data sources  
• Analyze raw data sources, data transformation, structural requirements for new software and applications
• Identify, design and implement internal process improvements, such as    
  • Data encryption    
  • Data de-identification to ensure data security
  • Role-based data access  
  • Automating manual processes
  • Optimizing data delivery
• Tuning and optimizing data processes for greater scalability, etc.  
• Design, build and implement automation processes for production release of data engineering, machine learning and business intelligence processes
• Code, test, document and maintain high-quality and scalable Big Data solutions
• Define security and backup strategy for data solutions
• Build and implement batch and near real time data pipelines
• Help to ensure successful deployment of newly implemented data solutions
• Works with less structured, more complex issues
• Serves as a technical leader and mentor to others

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:

• 6+ years of data engineering experience building and supporting production data pipelines
• 3+ years of hands-on experience with Google Cloud Platform, especially BigQuery, Cloud Storage, Dataproc, Cloud Workflows, Secret Manager, and IAM
• Solid Python development experience, including writing and maintaining data-processing code and testable utilities
• Experience with PySpark or Spark-based batch processing in cloud environments
• Experience designing and supporting batch ingestion pipelines with orchestration, retries, failure handling, rollback, and auditability
• Experience working with structured and semi-structured file ingestion patterns, schema validation, and upstream/downstream data contract enforcement
• Experience implementing automated testing and CI/CD for data platforms, including unit tests, integration tests, and workflow/runtime validation
• Experience with observability and operations for data systems, including monitoring, logging, incident response, root-cause analysis, and production support
• Experience collaborating with analysts, product teams, and platform/cloud engineers to deliver reliable data solutions
• Solid understanding of secure data handling, including encryption, secrets management, access controls, and least-privilege design
• Proven solid SQL skills, including complex query design, performance tuning, stored procedures, and data quality validation logic
• Proven solid documentation and communication skills, with the ability to own technical runbooks and operational handoff materials

Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field, or equivalent practical experience
• GCP certification or equivalent cloud architecture/data engineering certification
• Experience in healthcare, medical imaging, or other regulated environments handling sensitive data
• Experience with BigQuery-based analytical modeling, incremental load patterns, deduplication, correction/replay logic, and late-arriving data handling
• Experience maintaining cloud-native orchestration in YAML or workflow-as-code patterns
• Experience tuning Dataproc/Spark jobs for reliability, scalability, and cost efficiency
• Experience building data quality frameworks, reconciliation checks, and daily validation/monitoring dashboards
• Experience with GitHub Actions, repository-based validation suites, and release controls for data pipelines
• Experience supporting backfills, controlled reruns, and production incident recovery for large batch pipelines
• Experience mentoring engineers and driving engineering standards for testing, code quality, and operational readiness
• Experience in Agentic Development
• Knowledge of file-based ingestion controls such as naming standards, tenant validation, hash checks, and archival/audit requirements
• Familiarity with radiology, clinical, or multi-tenant healthcare data domains

Canada Residents Only: The salary range for Canada residents is $82,700 to $171,900 annually. Pay is based on several factors including but not limited to education, work experience, certifications, etc.

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.