Senior AI/ML Engineer

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, data and resources they need to feel their best. Here, you will find a culture guided by inclusion, talented peers, comprehensive benefits and career development opportunities. Come make an impact on the communities we serve as you help us advance health optimization on a global scale. Join us to start Caring. Connecting. Growing together.

Primary Responsibilities

• Serve as a hands-on individual contributor building and supporting AI/ML capabilities for the Behavioral Health portfolio
• Workflows, APIs, data pipelines, automated testing, and production-ready components that enable scalable AI-powered business solutions
• Develop assigned components under the technical direction of Lead and Senior AI engineers
• Focus on coding, model integration, prompt development, automated testing, data processing, deployment, and production support
• Contribute reusable components across BH UM Modernization, BH Provider Digital Agentic AI, ABA AI, ABA Oversight and Supervision, and Provider Health Dashboard.
• Grow into broader feature ownership as technical expertise and business-domain knowledge develop
• Develop, test, and maintain AI/ML services, large language model workflows, APIs, data pipelines, and application components
• Implement prompts, RAG pipelines, embeddings, vector retrieval, structured outputs, tool integrations, and agent workflows
• Build document-processing capabilities including ingestion, classification, extraction, chunking, summarization, and evidence identification
• Develop model-evaluation scripts, automated tests, regression suites, and data-quality checks.
• Support integration of AI services with provider portals, dashboards, UM applications, clinical systems, and enterprise data platforms
• Write clean, secure, maintainable, and well-tested Python code
• Participate in design discussions, code reviews, sprint demonstrations, defect resolution, and release activities
• Monitor AI services and investigate prompt, model, data, performance, and integration issues
• Create technical documentation for code, APIs, prompts, data mappings, evaluation results, and deployment processes
• Follow responsible AI, privacy, security, compliance, and human-review requirements
• Use AI-assisted development tools throughout requirements, coding, testing, documentation, and troubleshooting
• Collaborate effectively across engineering, product, data, operations, and business teams
• Comply with all applicable Company policies, procedures, and business directives, changes including those relating to work location, team assignments, work schedules, and flexible work arrangements

Required Qualifications

Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, AI/ML, data science, engineering, or a related field

8+ years of hands-on software development experience using Java, SQL, Git, APIs, and automated testing

5+ years of software engineering experience

2+ years of experience in developing and supporting AI/ML applications, LLM

Experience building applications with large language models, prompt engineering, RAG, vector databases, or agent frameworks

Working knowledge of machine learning, natural language processing, embeddings, transformers, and model evaluation

Familiarity with PyTorch, TensorFlow, scikit-learn, Hugging Face, LangChain, LangGraph, Semantic Kernel, or equivalent technologies

Familiarity with cloud platforms, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, logging, and application monitoring

Understanding of secure coding, data privacy, model traceability, responsible AI, and human-in-the-loop design

Proven solid analytical, debugging, collaboration, and technical-documentation skills

Proven willingness to learn Behavioral Health, utilization management, ABA, provider operations, and healthcare compliance workflows

Proven ability to work effectively within cross-functional and distributed delivery teams

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.