Senior AI/ML Engineer - | Prairie, |

Lead AI/ML 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 diversity and inclusion, talented peers, comprehensive benefits, and career development opportunities. Come make an impact on the communities we serve as you help us advance health equity on a global scale. Join us to start Caring. Connecting. Growing together.

Optum Insight partners with payers, providers, governments and life sciences companies to simplify and enhance clinical, administrative and financial processes through software-enabled services and analytics, while advancing value-based care. Our differentiated products, technology insights, clinical expertise and analytics support the entire health system - ultimately delivering better experiences for consumers. Optum Insight Technology and Engineering is a critical function in Optum Insight driving the innovation and value we provide our customers and partners. This team is focused on products, solutions, platform / enabling capability development, product development lifecycle, engineering excellence and connectivity to Optum Technology.

The Clinical Decision Support (CDS) Engineering team, a unit within the Optum Insight Technology organization is responsible for building commercial products helping payers and providers with administrative and clinician focused CDS solutions. We are seeking a lead AI/ML engineer who can bring deep expertise across the full development lifecycle of machine learning and generative AI-based solutions from design to development to MLOps. CDS is an area that truly touches payers, providers, as well as members and one where you can have a huge impact on improving the healthcare system for everyone.

You'll enjoy the flexibility to work remotely * from anywhere within the U.S. as you take on some tough challenges. For all hires in the Minneapolis or Washington, D.C. area, you will be required to work in the office a minimum of four days per week.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Design and implement analytics or AI/ML solutions to automate prior authorization and utilization management workflows
• Collaborate with business and operations teams to translate complex requirements into actionable AI solutions, and clearly communicate insights to leadership and stakeholders
• Design, train, deploy and iterate ML models in production using techniques such as generative AI/LLMs, NLP/NLU, computer vision and deep learning
• Work with large-scale data and distributed computing frameworks to process and analyze high-volume healthcare datasets efficiently
• Apply advanced methodologies in statistics, optimization, probability theory and machine learning to build tools, perform rigorous analysis and deliver robust solutions using Python or similar languages
• Partner with engineering teams to implement scalable, flexible pipelines that bring AI innovations into real-world products
• Adapt to an agile, fast-paced environment, and maintain a passion for exploring and integrating cutting-edge AI technologies to support future projects
• Stay current on GenAI advances and apply them pragmatically to improve outcomes

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's degree in Computer Science or related field
• 5+ years of professional experience building software-heavy ML systems using Python
• 2+ years of experience and proven track record of developing and deploying AI/ML models in cloud environments like AWS, Azure, or GCP (Azure preferred)
• Solid software engineering fundamentals (data structures, system design and development), and data engineering experience-particularly with large-scale data processing
• Experience working with unstructured text at scale (e.g., clinical notes, documents, policies or similar natural-language-heavy domains)
• Demonstrate the ability to independently initiate and drive projects from conception through completion

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with AI/ML frameworks like TensorFlow and PyTorch
• Demonstrated experience with GenAI agent frameworks like LangChain, LangGraph or Semantic Kernel
• Familiarity with LLM evaluation techniques (offline and online) and strategies to monitor model behavior post-deployment
• Development experience in the healthcare sector
• Solid understanding of modern sequence modeling, including hands-on fine-tuning of transformer-based models; maintaining or migrating legacy architectures; and familiarity with newer alternatives (e.g., state space models such as Mamba), including when to pretrain from scratch vs. adapt existing foundations
• Solid communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to diverse audiences

*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). The salary for this role will range from $91,700 to $163,700 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.

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.

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.