Lead AI/ML Engineer - Office-Based in Eden Prairie, MN

Optum Tech is a global leader in health care innovation. Our teams develop cutting-edge solutions that help people live healthier lives and help make the health system work better for everyone. From advanced data analytics and AI to cybersecurity, we use innovative approaches to solve some of health care's most complex challenges. Your contributions here have the potential to change lives. Ready to build the next breakthrough? Join us in making healthcare work better for everyone through people-led, responsible AI while Caring. Connecting. Growing together.

We're building agentic AI systems that transform how healthcare operations run - autonomous and human-in-the-loop agents that reason over healthcare use cases. As an AI/ML Engineer on the AI/ML team, you'll design, build, and deploy production LLM-powered agents that make real decisions on real claims, directly reducing cycle time and manual touches for millions of members. This is hands-on engineering: you'll own agentic workflows end to end, from problem framing and orchestration design through production monitoring.

  This position follows an office-based schedule with four in-office days per week.  

Primary Responsibilities: 

• Design and build agentic AI systems - multi-step, tool-using agents that plan, call functions/APIs, retrieve context, and act within guardrails on complex claims and clinical workflows
• Build and optimize the orchestration layer: tool/function calling, multi-agent coordination, state management, and integration with external systems via protocols such as MCP
• Develop retrieval-augmented (RAG) pipelines over clinical and policy documents, with evaluation harnesses that measure agent accuracy, tool-use correctness, and guard against regressions
• Take agents and models from prototype to production - data pipelines, APIs, serving infrastructure, deployment, and monitoring
• Define and track evaluation metrics for agentic systems (task success rate, tool-call accuracy, latency, cost-per-run, hallucination rate) and build the test suites that keep quality high as systems evolve
• Design human-in-the-loop patterns and guardrails so agents operate safely and auditably in a regulated environment
• Partner with clinical SMEs, product, and compliance to translate domain expertise and regulatory requirements (CMS, HIPAA, 42 CFR) into reliable systems
• Contribute to responsible-AI and governance practices - documentation, bias evaluation, and oversight design for autonomous workflows

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: 

• Undergraduate degree or equivalent experience
• 5+ years building and deploying ML systems in production
• 5+ years of experience with Python
• 5+ years of experience working as a Software engineering
• 3+ years of experience with LLMs (prompting, RAG, fine-tuning
• 1+ years of experience with Agentic AI systems

Preferred Qualifications: 

• Cloud and containers (AWS/Azure/GCP, Docker/Kubernetes) experience
• Experience with agent evaluation frameworks and LLM/agent observability tooling
• Familiarity with the Model Context Protocol (MCP) or similar tool-integration standards
• Healthcare, insurance, or other regulated-industry background
• SQL and large-scale data processing (Spark, etc.) experience
• Experience with MLOps practices - feature stores, model registries, automated retraining

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 $145,500 - $249,500 annually based on full-time employment. We comply with all minimum wage laws as applicable.

At UnitedHealth Group, our mission is to help people live healthier lives and help make the health system work better for everyone. Together, we are shaping the future of healthcare by harnessing technology and innovation to make care simpler to navigate, more affordable and more connected for the people we serve. We are committed to creating an inclusive workplace where everyone feels welcomed, valued, heard and respected, empowering people to bring their authentic selves to work and strengthening our collective impact through diverse talents, backgrounds, experiences and perspectives.

UnitedHealth Group and its affiliated brands are 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 and its affiliated brands are a drug-free workplace. Candidates are required to pass a drug test before beginning employment.