Senior Director Architecture - Remote

Join Optum Tech

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 to start Caring. Connecting. Growing together.

This role is accountable for shaping the architectural direction of complex healthcare platforms and ensuring that systems are scalable, resilient, secure, and interoperable. It unifies applications, data, services, and experience layers under a coherent enterprise architecture that supports members, providers, payers, and clinical operations.

The leader brings an AI-aware approach to modernizing processes, informing design decisions, and elevating operational intelligence - while maintaining rigorous standards for safety, privacy, and compliance. They partner with senior technology and business leaders, define architectural guardrails, promote reuse and consistency, and mentor architects and engineers to advance enterprisewide excellence.

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

• Shape the end-to-end architecture across platforms, services, and data domains, ensuring alignment with healthcare needs and enterprise standards
• Establish clear patterns, guardrails, and reusable models that support modernization, interoperability, and long term sustainability
• Apply an AI-aware mindset to inform design choices, improve clarity of tradeoffs, and guide teams toward a shared architectural vision
• Oversee design through the full lifecycle, ensuring reliability, performance, security, and cost effectiveness are built in from the start
• Support teams with AI-enhanced design tools that streamline modeling, analysis, and documentation
• Encourage thoughtful use of AI-aware patterns such as predictive insights, intelligent workflows, and automated quality checks
• Partner with data, ML, and analytics teams on safe, responsible integration of intelligence into systems
• Use AI tools to accelerate architecture tasks like API review, dependency analysis, and solution documentation
• Define and govern enterprise API standards, including OpenAPI/Swagger style guides and versioning practices
• Design solutions informed by healthcare data flows, eligibility/benefits concepts, provider models, and regulatory expectations
• Understand how EMR and clinical systems interact with payer platforms to guide integration and data movement
• Apply interoperability standards (FHIR, HL7, X12) to ensure systems communicate reliably and securely
• Mentor architects and engineers to strengthen system design, integration skills, and architectural thinking
• Lead design reviews, share best practices, and foster a culture focused on simplification, reuse, and responsible innovation
• Encourage safe and effective adoption of AI-augmented engineering techniques across teams
• Partner with SRE, platform, and security teams to ensure systems are reliable, observable, and resilient
• Identify architectural improvements that reduce operational effort and increase developer productivity
• Support continuous improvement with metrics, insights, and evolving standards - using AI-supported analysis where helpful

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

• 10+ years of experience architecting scalable platforms and microservices, including RESTful API design and cloud-native development
• 7+ years of experience in software solution architecture, with a focus on AI/ML systems
• 5+ years of experience working in healthcare technology ecosystems or familiarity with healthcare data, regulatory constraints, interoperability expectations, or enterprise health environments
• 5+ years of experience communicating architectural vision and strategy across cross-functional teams
• 3+ years of experience with cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP) and data integration tools
• 2+ years of experience designing agentic workflows or autonomous systems
• 1+ years of experience with AI/ML concepts including responsible AI principles, multi-agent solutions, generative AI, MCP and A2A
• 1+ years of experience with MLOps tools for deploying and managing models in production

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field (or equivalent experience)
• Experience integrating AI-enabled capabilities into enterprise systems while maintaining architectural hygiene, safety, compliance, and maintainability
• Experience leading large-scale modernization initiatives, interoperability transformations, or platform rationalization efforts
• Solid grounding in FHIR, HL7, X12, or healthcare-specific data exchange standards

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 $159,300 to $273,200 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 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.