Principal Software 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.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Collaborate closely with business stakeholders and Technical Product Owners (TPOs) to drive successful project delivery
• Provide leadership in software development, ensuring high-quality solutions that meet business needs
• Take ownership of operational support, troubleshooting, and resolving production issues efficiently
• Actively participate in all deployment activities, ensuring smooth releases and minimizing downtime
• Lead and mentor development teams, fostering best practices in software engineering and agile delivery
• Drive end-to-end delivery, ensuring projects are completed on time and align with organizational goals
• Develop novel AI approaches for healthcare using both structured and unstructured data
• Build and test deep learning and traditional ML models in distributed computing environments
• Design and plan experiments, conduct statistical analysis and create data visualizations
• Communicate findings with business stakeholders and collaborate to develop solutions that meet customer needs
• Collaborate with the Responsible Use of AI (RUAI) team to ensure that the delivered solutions are compliant with company policies and standards
• Develop and demonstrate AI use-cases, conducting workshops and training sessions to foster AI adoption
• Develop code and model documentation, patents and publications in scientific conferences and journals
• Collaborate with engineering teams to develop robust data pipelines of MLOps procedures for new solutions
• Stay up to date with latest technologies and literature
• 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:

• Degree in computer science or related quantitative field and 5+ years of industry/academic experience in AI/ML or a related field OR a PhD and 2+ years of experience
• 10+ years of software engineering experience
• 5+ years of AI/ML experience
• 5+ years of experience with Python, classical ML methods and deep learning, including deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch or Tensorflow
• 5+ years of experience working with clinical or healthcare related projects
• 3+ years of experience leading a team of software engineers
• Experience with LLM frameworks and/or NLP approaches such as text embedding and text classification
• Experience with distributed computing approaches such as Spark
• Experience with Snowflake and other relational databases
• Experience working on collaborative software projects using GitHub
• Proven solid technical communication skills
• Proven to be comfortable working in a fast paced, highly collaborative and fluid work environment
• Proven effective communication skills, including in an interdisciplinary environment
• Proven to develop and demonstrate AI use-cases, conducting workshops and training sessions to foster AI adoption

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.