Senior Software Engineer

About the role

Pursue your passion and potential as a Senior Software Engineer at Optum. Join a global organization dedicated to improving health outcomes through technology.

Primary Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain scalable backend services and APIs using Java and Python
• Architect and implement event-driven/microservices solutions using Kafka (topics, partitions, consumer groups, schemas, retries/DLQs)
• Model, optimize, and maintain relational and/or NoSQL databases (schema design, indexing, query tuning, migrations)
• Develop data processing pipelines (streaming and batch) with a focus on reliability, observability, and performance
• Build and integrate AI/ML-powered features (model inference services, prompt orchestration, vector search, or ML pipelines) and collaborate with data science teams
• Ensure production readiness: CI/CD, automated testing, monitoring/alerting, and incident response/root-cause analysis
• Enforce engineering best practices: code reviews, secure coding, documentation, and mentoring junior engineers
• Collaborate cross-functionally with product, QA, platform/SRE, and stakeholders to deliver roadmap initiatives

Required Qualifications

• High School Diploma/GED
• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience building backend systems in Java and/or Python
• 5+ years of experience leading a team of 5-10 engineers
• 3+ years of experience with databases (PostgreSQL/MySQL/Oracle and/or MongoDB/Cassandra), including performance tuning and transactional consistency
• 3+ years of experience in cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP), containerization (Docker/Kubernetes), and CI/CD
• 2+ years of experience with Kafka in production (exactly-once/at-least-once semantics, schema evolution, monitoring, capacity planning)
• 2+ years of experience designing distributed systems (microservices, REST/gRPC, concurrency, caching, resiliency patterns)
• 1+ years of experience delivering AI-enabled solutions (LLM integration, ML inference deployment, feature engineering, vector databases such as Pinecone/Weaviate/pgvector, or MLOps tools)

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science (or equivalent practical experience)

Soft Skills

• Strong problem-solving, communication, and ability to lead technical design discussions

Benefits

Learn more about our range of benefits designed to help you live well, including Life, Emotional, Physical, and Financial resources.