Senior AI/ML 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

Are you passionate about applying AI to solve complex business challenges at enterprise scale? We are seeking a Senior AI/ML Engineer to design, build, and operationalize AI capabilities that drive decision-making, productivity, and innovation across the Enterprise Finance organization. In this role, you will lead the development of AI-powered solutions including large language model (LLM) applications, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), intelligent agents, classification models, summarization workflows, and decision-support tools. You will partner closely with Finance, Data Engineering, Architecture, Security, and Responsible AI teams to deliver trusted, scalable, and governed AI solutions that align with enterprise AI/ML engineering practices and productization standards.

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

Primary Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and deploy AI-powered solutions and architectures-including LLM workflows, prompt orchestration chains, agent-based solutions, RAG applications, and decision-support capabilities-to solve complex business challenges
• Develop advanced prompt strategies, grounding approaches, tool-calling patterns, guardrails, and fallback mechanisms to improve solution quality, safety, and reliability
• Partner with Data Engineering teams to establish and maintain seamless access to trusted, governed, and high-quality enterprise data sources
• Establish robust evaluation frameworks, test datasets, scoring rubrics, and model-performance benchmarks across AI deliverables
• Monitor and optimize output quality, relevance, accuracy, consistency, latency, cost efficiency, and hallucination risk in production systems
• Conduct failure-mode analysis and implement continuous improvements to AI systems and automated workflows
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Quality Engineering, Responsible AI, Security, Privacy, Compliance, and Enterprise Architecture teams
• Document AI solution behaviors, limitations, risk controls, and operational monitoring requirements
• Support production readiness through observability, system monitoring, model evaluation, and drift detection practices
• Evaluate emerging AI trends, methodologies, and enterprise-approved tools to inform solution design, streamline workflows, and drive strategic innovation

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

• 3+ years of experience in software engineering, machine learning, or AI engineering
• 2+ years of experience with cloud-native architectures, APIs, and scalable software systems
• 1+ years of hands-on experience building and deploying generative AI and LLM-based applications in production environments

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, or a related field
• Experience supporting Finance, FP&A, Accounting, Treasury, Tax, or related enterprise corporate functions
• 1+ years of experience developing and deploying agentic AI solutions
• Familiarity with AI observability, model monitoring, vector databases, semantic search, and knowledge retrieval systems
• Demonstrated experience taking enterprise AI products end-to-end from initial design through production support
• 2+ years of experience with prompt engineering, RAG architectures, model evaluation, and operational AI governance
• 1+ years of demonstrated experience implementing Responsible AI, data security, privacy, and compliance practices in technical solutions

*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 $120,100 to $214,500 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