Lead AI/ML Software Engineer - Remote

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.

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.

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

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

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

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor of Science in computer science or related quantitative field
• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, with at least 5+ years building and operating production ML systems
• Expert‑level Python experience, including writing production‑grade, testable, and maintainable code
• Hands‑on experience building and deploying APIs using FastAPI (or similar Python web frameworks) in a production environment
• Solid experience deploying, managing, and scaling services in Kubernetes, including:
  • Containerization (Docker)
  • Helm or equivalent deployment tooling
  • Resource tuning, autoscaling, and failure recovery
• Proven experience with MLOps practices, including:
  • Model deployment and versioning
  • Monitoring model performance, drift, and system health

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with AzureML, DataBricks, and Azure Kubernetes
• Experience with distributed computing approaches
• 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 $112,700 to $193,200 annually based on full‑time employment. We comply with all minimum wage laws as applicable.

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.