Senior AI/ML 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.

Optum AI is UnitedHealth Group's enterprise AI team. We are AI/ML scientists and engineers with deep expertise in AI/ML engineering for health care. We develop AI/ML solutions for the highest impact opportunities across UnitedHealth Group businesses including UnitedHealthcare, Optum Financial, Optum Health, Optum Insight, and Optum Rx. In addition to transforming the health care journey through responsible AI/ML innovation, our charter also includes developing and supporting an enterprise AI/ML development platform.

Optum AI team members:

• Have impact at scale: We have the data and resources to make an impact at scale. When our solutions are deployed, they have the potential to make health care system work better for everyone.
• Do ground-breaking work: Many of our current projects involve cutting edge ML, NLP and LLM techniques. Generative AI methods for working with structured and unstructured health care data are continuously being developed and improved. We are working in one of the most important frontiers of AI/ML research and development.
• Partner with world‑class experts on innovative solutions: Our team members are developing novel AI/ML solutions to business challenges. In some cases, this includes the opportunity to file patents and publish papers about the methods we develop. We also collaborate with AI/ML researchers at some of the world's top universities.

As a Senior AI/ML Software Engineer, you will be responsible for the design and implementation of cutting‑edge AI/ML systems for real-world healthcare challenges at Optum; including problems around improving patient engagement through smart nudging, predicting onset and progression of disease, Large Language Model solutions for summarizing large scale patient information, and optimizing clinical trials using both structured and unstructured (text) data. As a senior engineer in charge of AI systems, you will apply state-of-the-art approaches for MLOps to ensure the performance, scalability and reliability of machine learning models serving our customers and build data pipelines that deliver real‑time insights.

You’ll enjoy the flexibility to work remotely from anywhere within the U.S. as you take on some tough challenges.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Own the inference and delivery of machine learning insights to multiple customers
• Manage, monitor, and scale machine learning systems, delivering insights to multiple customers
• Partner with cross‑functional engineering teams to implement scalable, flexible pipelines that bring AI innovations into real‑world products
• Work with large‑scale data and distributed computing frameworks to process and analyze high‑volume healthcare datasets efficiently
• Drive pipeline efficiency and reliability through profiling, refactoring and advanced engineering
• Develop new data pipelines to improve ML model usage

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 of Science in computer science or related quantitative field
• 3+ years of experience with PySpark or SQL
• 3+ years of experience with software engineering and software development life cycle (SDLC)
• 2+ years of experience with CI/CD tools to ship production quality code
• 2+ years of experience with cloud environments and cloud‑based batch model deployments using Python in at least one of Azure, AWS, Google Cloud

Preferred Qualifications:

• MS in computer science or related quantitative field
• Experience with Databricks, AzureML, and Snowflake or related technologies
• Experience with distributed computing approaches such as Spark
• Expertise in ML Ops, for example, model monitoring, drift detection, and event‑based model retraining
• Proven solid technical communication skills
• Proven ability and drive to learn independently
• Proven problem‑solving and analytical thinking
• Proven ability to explain technical decisions to stakeholders

*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 $89,900 to $160,600 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.

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.