Senior AI or ML Engineer

Requisition Number: 2373421
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:

• Lead the design, development, and deployment of scalable AI/ML solutions addressing complex, high-impact business problems
• Own end-to-end solution architecture including data pipelines, model development, deployment strategy, and production integration
• Drive the development of advanced AI capabilities using NLP, deep learning, predictive modeling, and Generative AI
• Lead and guide the implementation of robust ML pipelines ensuring scalability, reliability, and performance
• Establish and enforce best practices for MLOps, including CI/CD, model monitoring, retraining, and governance
• Collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders to identify high-value AI opportunities and translate them into scalable solutions
• Provide technical leadership, mentoring junior engineers and reviewing design/code to ensure quality and consistency
• Optimize model performance, conduct error analysis, and implement improvements in production systems
• Contribute to defining architecture standards, reusable frameworks, and enterprise-wide AI best practices
• Communicate complex technical concepts, decisions, and trade-offs effectively to leadership and non-technical stakeholders
• Stay ahead of emerging AI trends and drive adoption of innovative approaches within the team
• 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:

• Graduate degree or equivalent experience
• Experience with NLP, Large Language Models (LLMs), and Generative AI use cases
• Experience building enterprise-scale AI systems with strong reliability, governance, and compliance considerations
• Experience leading technical initiatives or mentoring teams
• Familiarity with distributed computing frameworks such as Spark or Ray
• Exposure to Responsible AI practices including fairness, bias mitigation, and model explainability

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.