Senior Data Scientist

Requisition number: 2390013

Job category: Business & Data Analytics

Optum Insight is partnering 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 as part of Optum's broader mission to help millions of people live healthier lives. Through this work, teams contribute to better health outcomes by improving how care, data, and services connect across the health system. Join us to start Caring. Connecting. Growing together.

Location: Remote

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 for a minimum of four days per week.

Position Summary

The Clinical Decision Support (CDS) Engineering team, a unit within the Optum Insight Technology organization, is responsible for building commercial products that help payers and providers with administrative- and clinician-focused CDS solutions. In this role as a Principal Data Scientist, you will lead high-impact AI initiatives characterized by scale and complexity. You will architect robust, secure AI systems, train state-of-the-art transformer and multimodal models, and bridge the gap between AI research and production software engineering. By extracting deep insights from healthcare data and maintaining the highest standards of responsible and ethical AI, you will help shape the next generation of intelligent health solutions.

Primary Responsibilities

• Drive end-to-end generative AI and machine learning projects that have a high degree of ambiguity, scale, and complexity

• Design robust AI architectures, ensuring that systems are scalable, secure, and efficient; select appropriate technologies, frameworks, and methodologies

• Develop predictive, prescriptive, and optimization models to improve business performance and operational effectiveness using machine learning, deep learning, NLP, and generative AI capabilities

• Formulate hypotheses, conduct experiments, and validate findings using rigorous analytical and statistical methodologies

• Use enterprise-approved AI tools to streamline workflows, automate tasks, and drive continuous improvement

• Partner with business, product, operations, and technology teams to translate complex analytical findings into clear business recommendations and executive-level insights

• Perform hands-on analysis and modeling of healthcare data sets to develop insights that increase business value

• Run A/B experiments, gather data, and perform statistical analysis; continuously assess AI system performance and optimize algorithms and models to improve accuracy and efficiency

• Research and implement innovative machine learning approaches, evaluate emerging trends to inform solution design, and translate cutting-edge AI advancements into production-ready capabilities that can be re-used across the enterprise

• Uphold ethical AI principles by embedding fairness, transparency, and accountability throughout the model development lifecycle

You'll be rewarded and recognized for your performance in an environment that will challenge you and give you clear directions on what it takes to succeed in your role as well as provide development for other roles you may be interested in.

Required Qualifications

• Master's / PHD degree in Math, Applied Math, Statistics, Computer Science, Physics, Engineering or related field

• 5+ years of industry or academic experience in machine learning or a related data science field

• 5+ years of experience building machine learning models

• 5+ years of experience with Python programming and deep learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch or TensorFlow)

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working with complex structured and non-structured datasets

• Practical experience with public cloud AI technology stacks and modern data ecosystems

• Understanding of statistics and statistical best practices

• Experience applying Generative AI, Large Language Models (LLMs) to business problem

• Experience with state-of-the-art ML architectures (e.g., Transformers/LLMs, multimodal modeling)

*All Telecommuters 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 $91,700 to $163,700 annually based on full-time employment. We comply with all minimum wage laws as applicable.

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

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.

Diversity creates a healthier atmosphere: UnitedHealth Group is an Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law.

UnitedHealth Group is a drug-free workplace. Candidates are required to pass a drug test before beginning employment.

#RPO, #GREEN