Remote Lead AI/ML Engineer | Drive Production-grade AI

UnitedHealth Group; Eden Prairie (MN); Remote; Confidential; Full time

Job summary

UnitedHealth Group's Optum Tech AI Transformation team seeks a high-impact technical leader to own the AI/ML direction for a squad of engineers, driving strategy, delivery, and responsible AI governance.

You will mentor a team of 5–10, align architecture with enterprise standards, and ensure production-grade outcomes across real-time underwriting and enterprise initiatives, while maintaining HIPAA/PHI compliance.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software development experience with a strong engineering and architecture foundation.
• 2+ years of hands-on experience in AI/ML project implementation (full lifecycle from ideation, data analysis, model development through production deployment).
• Hands-on experience with NLP (text processing, embeddings, transformers, NER, text classification, or conversational AI).
• Working experience with GenAI (RAG pipelines, prompt engineering, LLM integration, fine-tuning techniques like LoRA, and enterprise deployment).
• Experience or strong working knowledge of Agentic AI development (agentic workflows, tool orchestration, multi-agent systems, or planning frameworks).
• Very solid Python programming skills with deep proficiency in production-grade coding, code reviews, and enforcing standards.
• Driver's license and access to reliable transportation.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and deploy production-grade AI-powered solutions spanning ML, Generative AI, and multi-agent orchestration frameworks.
• Own the end-to-end AI/ML technical roadmap, defining architectural direction, technologies, and coding standards for the team's portfolio.
• Use enterprise-approved AI tools to streamline workflows, automate tasks, and drive continuous improvement across the development lifecycle.
• Evaluate emerging trends and technologies to inform high-quality solution design and strategic innovation.
• Drive MLOps maturity across development pipelines, including model versioning, CI/CD for ML, retraining automation, drift detection, and production monitoring.
• Ensure compliance and ethical governance by aligning solutions with enterprise policies and HIPAA/PHI handling.
• Lead, mentor, and develop a team of 5-10 AI/ML engineers, setting goals and fostering a high-performance culture.
• Own and conduct robust technical reviews (architecture, design, and code) to enforce rigorous standards and security.

Skills

Python programming

AI/ML project implementation

NLP

GenAI/LLM integration

Agentic AI development

Software architecture

Leadership & mentoring

Communication

Education

Bachelor's or MS in CS/Engineering/Math/Statistics

Tools

MLflow

Weights & Biases

Kubeflow

Job description

UnitedHealth Group's Optum Tech AI Transformation team seeks a high-impact technical leader to own the AI/ML direction for a squad of engineers, driving strategy, delivery, and responsible AI governance.

You will mentor a team of 5–10, align architecture with enterprise standards, and ensure production-grade outcomes across real-time underwriting and enterprise initiatives, while maintaining HIPAA/PHI compliance.