Senior AI/ML Engineer Remote Nationwide or Office-Based in MN/DC/NJ

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.

The Provider Digital Technology team delivers a unified, intuitive digital entry point for UnitedHealthcare providers and partners to access tools, services, and information. We build secure, scalable capabilities that simplify how providers discover, navigate, and engage across the Portal, API, EDI, Chat, and Voice channels.

Our AI/ML engineering team develops production-grade intelligent solutions, including generative AI assistants, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), agentic workflows, conversational AI, predictive models, and intelligent automation. We partner across UnitedHealthcare and UnitedHealth Group to integrate enterprise applications and data sources while applying responsible AI, privacy, security, safety, observability, and human-centered design principles. This work reduces friction, improves provider workflows, and enables faster, more effective problem-solving across the health care ecosystem.

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. For all hires in New Jersey, you will be required to work in the office a minimum of three days per week.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Lead the responsible adoption of AI/ML across the team, applying Generative AI, Agentic AI, NLP, predictive modeling, and traditional machine learning to high-value provider use cases
• Design, build, evaluate, deploy, and continuously improve production-grade AI/ML services, APIs, and applications that meet customer, business, reliability, and scalability needs
• Engineer responsible AI solutions with appropriate guardrails, privacy and security controls, human oversight, auditability, and compliance with enterprise and regulatory standards
• Develop LLM-powered capabilities using prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), embeddings, vector search, tool use, structured outputs, and model evaluation techniques
• Provide technical leadership for Agentic AI, chatbots, voice assistants, conversational AI, and workflow automation, including orchestration through MCP or similar frameworks
• Partner with product managers, architects, data scientists, platform teams, and engineering leaders to translate complex health care needs into scalable AI solutions
• Align solution architecture with enterprise AI strategy, reusable platform capabilities, engineering standards, cloud modernization, and measurable business outcomes
• Establish high-quality engineering practices for experimentation, automated testing, model and prompt evaluation, CI/CD, observability, performance, resiliency, and production support
• Mentor engineers on AI/ML architecture, Python and Java development, responsible AI, LLM application patterns, evaluation frameworks, and operational excellence
• Integrate AI capabilities with enterprise data, APIs, event-driven services, cloud platforms, and digital channels while maintaining secure and reliable data flows
• Exercise independent judgment to prioritize technical work, manage delivery risks, communicate tradeoffs, and drive AI initiatives from proof of concept through production scale

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:

• BS in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field (or equivalent experience)
• 6+ years of software engineering experience
• 4+ years of hands-on experience designing and building AI/ML solutions, including LLM applications, Generative AI, NLP, predictive models, or traditional machine learning
• 4+ years of software engineering experience with web services, RESTful APIs, microservices, and system integration
• 4+ years of experience deploying and o…