Principal Software Engineer

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.

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

• Delivering solutions and responsible for outcomes across data engineering, balancing feature delivery, technical debt reduction, and platform resilience
• Own architecture, design for key high stake projects
• Provide clear technical and executional direction to drive predictability, quality, and accountability
• Drive platform capabilities that expand automation for client implementations and improve transparency and traceability across file processing and data onboarding workflows
• Ensure production stability, incident readiness, and SLA adherence for pipeline processing and client integrations through metrics driven operations and continuous improvement
• Partner with cross functional teams to improve implementation efficiency, reduce client response times, and increase NPS through platform and process maturity
• Guide technical direction for an end to end data engineering ecosystem leveraging cloud native services and modern patterns (e.g., Spark/Scala, Azure Data Factory, Databricks, Delta Lake, Service Bus, Snowflake)
• Lead modernization and scalability initiatives to support multiple pipeline patterns and enable platform agnostic analytics
• Drive adoption of AI enabled engineering workflows to improve throughput, consistency, and operational effectiveness
• Partner with teams to design and operationalize agentic solutions that securely connect models to enterprise tools and data using MCP client server patterns
• Security, Privacy, and Data Governance
• Ensure engineering practices meet enterprise security, privacy, and governance standards for sensitive healthcare data, with privacy by design embedded in delivery
• Communicate status, risks, and mitigation plans clearly across stakeholders and collaborate closely with adjacent platforms and initiatives

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

• 8+ years of solid engineering fundamentals: system design, reliability, observability, automation, CI/CD, and secure SDLC practices
• 5+ years in engineering leadership, mentoring engineers, including ownership of delivery and operations for production systems
• 4+ years of experience leading cloud-native and data-intensive platforms (ETL/ELT pipelines, orchestration, workflow engines, API-driven integrations)
• 2+ years of experience with components of the current stack used across the portfolio such as: Azure services and data ecosystem: Azure Data Factory, Databricks, Delta Lake/Blob Storage, Service Bus, Snowflake
• 1+ years experience driving AI enabled build and automation initiatives that delivered measurable improvements in team level engineering productivity, cycle time, and delivery quality
• Demonstrated ability to partner with product and operations to deliver measurable outcomes (speed-to-market, quality, stability, cost)

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building or integrating with agentic tooling/automation concepts for operational transparency
• Execution excellence: Proven to translate strategy into quarterly plans and delivers with predictable cadence
• Operational rigor: Proven to set a high bar for reliability, incident prevention, and continuous improvement
• Technical judgment: Proven to balance short-term delivery with long-term platform health and scalability

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 $134,600 to $230,800 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.

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.