Lead AI Software Engineer - Remote/Hybrid IT Ops

Optum; Minnetonka (MN); Hybrid; USD 113,000 - 193,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive benefits package

Equity stock purchase program

401k contribution

Job summary

Optum is seeking a Lead Software Engineer to build intelligent automation, predictive analytics, and agentic AI for IT operations. You will design and productionize ML models and AI-driven workflows to improve observability and incident response, with collaboration across data scientists, engineers, and platform teams.

The role supports remote work from anywhere in the U.S. with MN/DC office presence required at least four days per week for local hires.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, or related field or equivalent practical experience.
• 3+ years deploying AI/ML solutions in production.
• 3+ years Python and SQL experience, with Spark or similar distributed data processing.
• 2+ years applying ML to IT operations, observability, or reliability.
• 2+ years cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, or GCP) experience, including hybrid/cloud-native architectures.
• 2+ years MLOps, CI/CD, model monitoring and lifecycle management.
• 1+ years NLP, Large Language Models, Generative AI, and modern AI frameworks.
• 1+ years Docker and Kubernetes containerization experience.

Responsibilities

• AI/ML Development: design, build, and maintain ML models and AI-driven automation for IT operations.
• Data & Platform Engineering: build data pipelines from observability and ITSM platforms.
• Feature Engineering & Model Support: develop feature sets for anomaly detection and predictive alerting.
• Model Operationalization: deploy and productionize ML models for scale.
• AI-Driven Automation: integrate ML/AI outputs into orchestration platforms to enable self-healing workflows.
• Agentic AI Development: build components that reason, plan, and execute actions across IT operations.
• MLOps Practices: follow model lifecycle standards, data governance, and security requirements.
• Cloud & Infrastructure: utilize cloud-native/hybrid architectures for real-time analytics and scalable inference.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: work with engineers, security, and business stakeholders.
• Responsible AI: apply fairness, transparency, explainability, and accountability throughout development.

Skills

AI/ML Development

Python

Distributed Data Processing (Spark)

MLOps

Cloud Computing

NLP/LLMs

Containerization

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/DS/Engineering

Tools

Splunk

Dynatrace

ServiceNow

Docker

Kubernetes

Jenkins

Interlink

Job description

Optum is seeking a Lead Software Engineer to build intelligent automation, predictive analytics, and agentic AI for IT operations. You will design and productionize ML models and AI-driven workflows to improve observability and incident response, with collaboration across data scientists, engineers, and platform teams.

The role supports remote work from anywhere in the U.S. with MN/DC office presence required at least four days per week for local hires.