Lead Software Engineer

About the role

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.

Primary Responsibilities

• Back-End Data Engineering, AI and Digital Application Development
• Lead the design, development, and implementation of next-generation Optum Bank's Digital, data and AI systems
• Design and implement Small Language Models (SLMs) optimized for domain-specific tasks such as customer interactions, document understanding, or process automation
• Build and maintain AI frameworks enabling scalable training, inference, experiment tracking, observability, and model governance
• Design, Develop and deploy AI Agents capable of orchestration, reasoning, planning, and workflow automation across enterprise systems
• Develop and operationalize AI/ML models including:
• Fraud detection (transaction scoring, anomaly detection)
• Lending underwriting (risk modeling, creditworthiness, scoring pipelines)
• Personalization, recommendation, NLP, forecasting, and more.

Technical Leadership & Hands-On Engineering

• Lead technical design sessions, conduct POCs, and build reference architectures and reusable frameworks
• Write high-quality, production-grade code in languages such as Python, Java, Scala, or TypeScript
• Partner with data engineering teams to optimize data lakehouse, distributed computing, and feature engineering architectures
• Evaluate emerging AI/ML technologies and drive adoption of best-fit solutions
• AI-Driven Developer Productivity
• Leverage Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, and similar AI-assisted development tools to:
• Increase developer velocity
• Improve code quality and consistency
• Automate documentation, testing, and code review workflows
• Reduce time-to-market for complex transformation initiatives
• Evangelize AI-powered engineering patterns and train teams on effective usage

Application Modernization & Transformation

• Guide modernization of legacy systems into cloud-native, AI-native applications
• Define patterns for integrating AI agents, LLMs, and SLMs into operational applications and microservices
• Collaborate with platform teams to ensure efficient infrastructure, MLOps, CI/CD, and model deployment workflows

Governance, Risk & Compliance

• Ensure responsible AI practices including fairness, explainability, model monitoring, ethics, and regulatory alignment (e.g., lending compliance)
• Implement robust evaluation and drift detection frameworks

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Influence senior leaders, product teams, and engineering stakeholders on AI strategy and roadmap
• Act as technical mentor and thought leader across AI and data domains

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years in software engineering, data engineering, or machine learning
• 3+ years designing large-scale data transformation or AI / ML Implementations
• Hands-on experience with: Development skills in Java, .Net, SQL Server / Oracle, Databrick, Power BI AI/ML frameworks: PyTorch, TensorFlow, Scikit-learn LLMs & SLMs: Llama models, Claude, custom SLM training Data & compute: Spark, Databricks, Flink, Kafka, lakehouse architectures Cloud platforms: Azure, AWS, or GCP
• Experience building or integrating: AI Agents Vector databases (FAISS, Pinecone, Chroma) Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems Solid skills in Python, SQL, and distributed systems

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building enterprise-grade AI platforms or ML Ops frameworks
• Expertise in fraud, risk, underwriting, or financial modeling
• Hands-on experience with AI coding tools (Claude Code, Copilot, Codex)

Soft Skills

• Solid communication and storytelling, capable of influencing architecture decisions
• Ability to simplify complex concepts for non-technical stakeholders
• Execution-driven, collaborative mindset with a focus on business outcomes

Benefits

• Comprehensive benefits package
• Incentive and recognition programs
• Equity stock purchase
• 401k contribution

Pay

The salary for this role will range from $112,700 to $193,200 annually based on full-time employment.

Application Deadline

This will be posted for a minimum of 2 business days or until a sufficient candidate pool has been collected.