Principal Software Engineer

Requisition Number: 2391793
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:

• Provide technical leadership and architectural guidance for complex, enterprise-scale platforms and services
• Drive the design, development, and delivery of highly scalable, secure, and resilient software solutions
• Partner with product, engineering, operations, and business stakeholders to translate strategic objectives into technical roadmaps
• Establish engineering standards, best practices, and governance frameworks to improve quality, reliability, and maintainability
• Lead evaluation and adoption of emerging technologies, architecture patterns, and engineering practices
• Mentor senior engineers and development teams, fostering technical excellence and knowledge sharing
• Champion operational excellence through automation, observability, reliability engineering, and continuous improvement
• Identify and mitigate technical risks while balancing short-term delivery objectives with long-term platform sustainability
• Drive platform modernization initiatives and support adoption across multiple teams and business areas
• Contribute to strategic planning, technical decision-making, and cross-functional leadership initiatives
• Comply with all applicable Company policies, procedures, and business directives, changes including those relating to work location, team assignments, work schedules, and flexible work arrangements

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
• 9+ years of progressive software engineering experience with solid expertise in Java, .NET, or Python, distributed systems, and enterprise application development
• 4+ years of experience designing and delivering large-scale distributed systems and cloud-native applications
• 4+ years of experience with modern software engineering practices, including:
  • CI/CD
  • Test automation
  • DevSecOps
  • Software quality engineering
• 4+ years of experience with public cloud platforms such as:
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Amazon Web Services (AWS)
  • Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
• 4+ years of experience with containerization and orchestration technologies, including Kubernetes
• 4+ years of experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and platform automation frameworks
• 2+ years of experience building and operating platforms or shared services used across multiple teams or business units
• Deep understanding of:
  • System architecture
  • Scalability
  • Reliability
  • Security
  • Performance engineering
• Proven solid communication, collaboration, and stakeholder management skills
• Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction and drive engineering excellence across organizations

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.