Principal Data Engineer

Our Company

Optum is a global organization that delivers care, aided by technology to help millions of people live healthier lives. The work you do with our team will directly improve health outcomes by connecting people with the care, pharmacy benefits, and data they need to feel their best. Here, you will find a culture guided by diversity and inclusion, talented peers, comprehensive benefits, and career development opportunities. Come make an impact on the communities we serve as you help us advance health equity on a global scale. Join us to start Caring. Connecting. Growing together.

Position Summary

The Enterprise Finance Data Engineering team is seeking a Lead Data Engineer (Principal Data Engineering) to design, build, and manage the foundational data architectures that power enterprise finance analytics, automation, and modern AI solutions. In this role, you will partner closely with finance stakeholders, AI engineers, and governance teams to deliver trusted, scalable, and secure data products that drive measurable business value. You will play a pivotal role in engineering high-impact data pipelines, semantic layers, retrieval indexes, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) data patterns using cloud-based data platforms and advanced integration technologies.

You'll enjoy the flexibility to telecommute* from anywhere within the U.S. as you take on some tough challenges.

Primary Responsibilities

• Design, build, and deploy data pipelines, transformations, semantic layers, retrieval indexes, and reusable data products to address complex enterprise finance challenges with an emphasis on responsible AI use
• Partner with AI Engineers on RAG architectures, embeddings, vector databases, grounding strategies, and data refresh processes
• Identify and evaluate data sources, systems of record, reference data, documents, and operational data required to support finance solutions while assessing data quality, completeness, lineage, sensitivity, and accessibility
• Collaborate with security, privacy, compliance, and data governance teams to ensure appropriate data handling, access controls, and compliance
• Develop synthetic, masked, or de-identified datasets for development, testing, and experimentation environments
• Implement data quality monitoring, validation controls, lineage documentation, and automated exception-handling processes
• Support experimentation, control-group testing, and value measurement through reliable baseline and treatment datasets
• Evaluate emerging data and AI trends to inform solution architecture, design, and strategic innovation
• Use enterprise-approved AI tools to streamline workflows, automate data operations, and drive continuous improvement

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

• 7+ years of experience in data engineering, data platform architecture, or related technical roles
• 5+ years of hands-on experience with SQL, API integrations, ETL/ELT development, and batch or streaming data architectures
• 3+ years of experience building and optimizing large-scale data pipelines on cloud-based data platforms (e.g., Azure, AWS, GCP, or Snowflake)
• 3+ years of experience with data modeling, metadata management, data lineage, and enterprise data governance practices
• 2+ years of experience implementing enterprise data security, privacy, and access control standards

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or 4+ years of equivalent data engineering experience
• Experience supporting finance domains such as FP&A, accounting, tax, treasury, or financial reporting
• Experience enabling generative AI, machine learning, or large language model (LLM) data solutions in an enterprise production environment
• 2+ years of experience supporting AI/ML data patterns (e.g., embeddings, vector databases, document chunking, semantic retrieval, RAG architectures, or feature preparation)
• Experience with modern data governance, observability, and cataloging tools (e.g., Collibra, Monte Carlo, Alation, or Great Expectations)
• Proven stakeholder management and communication skills with the ability to bridge finance business requirements and technical data engineering solutions
• Proven ability to deliver iteratively in a fast-paced environment while upholding governance, data quality, and repeatability

*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 $112,700 to $193,200 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