Operational Excellence Associate Director

UnitedHealth Group; Hyderabad; On-site; INR 1,800,000 - 3,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Optum, part of UnitedHealth Group, seeks a senior Six Sigma leader to drive quality and process improvements across healthcare initiatives in Hyderabad.

You will lead teams of practitioners, partner with leaders and Stateside groups, and deliver measurable outcomes through automation, ML and AI-driven projects while upholding compliance.

This role emphasizes change management, stakeholder alignment and clear communication to enable successful transformations.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in any discipline.
• 10+ years of Six Sigma and CI project experience (12+ total).
• 3+ years in leadership and people management.
• Experience with automation, ML, NLP, AI projects.
• Experience solving major project or customer issues.
• Experience with stakeholders across leadership levels.
• Change management, communication and presentation skills.

Responsibilities

• Drive Six Sigma quality culture across the organization.
• Lead and oversee teams of Six Sigma practitioners & project managers.
• Track and ensure process improvement goals are met and initiatives launched.
• Lead functional or segment teams or projects.
• Collaborate with leaders and Stateside business partners.
• Comply with policies including work location, schedules, and flexible work arrangements.

Skills

Six Sigma

Leadership

Stakeholder mgmt

Communication

Change management

Automation understanding

Education

Bachelor's degree

Job description

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:

• Drive Six Sigma quality culture in the organization
• Lead and oversees work performed by a team of Six Sigma practitioners & project managers in aligned span
• Tracks and ensures that process improvement goals in aligned span are met and relevant initiatives are launched to support attainment of critical business objectives
• Leads functional or segment teams or projects
• Frontlines and collaborates well with leaders and with Stateside business partners
• 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 Degree in any discipline
• 10+ years of extensive work experience in Six Sigma and CI projects, 12+ years total work experience
• 3+ years of leadership - people management experience
• Experience in projects involving emerging technologies (automation, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intellgience, etc.)
• Experience solving major project or customer issues
• Extensive experience in working with stakeholders across leadership levels
• Demonstrated experience in change management
• Demonstrated excellent communication & presentation skills

Preferred Qualifications:

• Six Sigma Black Belt or Master Black Belt certification from a recognized certification body or previous organization
• Project Management certification / Master's of Business Administration
• Knowledge of Lean Six Sigma
• Knowledge of project management
• Knowledge of design thinking
• Exposure to a US Healthcare account in previous role or organization
• Demonstrated ability to clearly describe the way they approach aligning their team including shared goals, team building and more
• Demonstrated ability to network within their team, department, organization, industry and community
• Demonstrated ability to advocate with senior leaders for change or for a new idea
• Demonstrated ability to highlight the possibilities that exist, while acknowleding difficulties will exist when deciding
• Demonstrated ability to seek to understand the 'why' behind decisions, provides examples of when they have done so and how they translated this to the team
• Demonstrated ability to help the team learn from mistakes and errors, rarely repeating any
• Proven to be an active coach to their teams and routinely provides performance and development feedback
• Proven ability to support the team to come up with new and better ways to do work, solve problems or meet stakeholders and customers needs
• Proven ability to provide the team with guidance about what is expected, as well as a common starting point for shared work
• Proven ability to make decisions that yield productive or positive outcomes most of the time

NOTICE: Other duties and responsibilities, not specifically described, may be defined or assigned from time to time, consistent with knowledge, skills and abilities of the incumbent by management.

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.