Senior Data Engineer

Optum; Eden Prairie (MN); Hybrid; USD 92,000 - 164,000; Full time

Job summary

Optum is seeking a Data Engineer to make data usable, trusted, secure, and repeatable. You will identify data sources, build pipelines, and partner with AI and security teams to deliver scalable data products.

The role offers a hybrid schedule and emphasizes governance, quality, and production readiness to support enterprise AI initiatives.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree OR 5+ years of software engineering experience.
• 5+ years of data engineering across pipelines, SQL, APIs, batch/streaming patterns, and cloud data platforms.
• 3+ years of data modeling, data quality, lineage, metadata, and governance.
• 2+ years of AI data patterns, including embeddings, vector databases, document chunking, semantic retrieval, and feature preparation.
• 2+ years of understanding enterprise data security, privacy, access control, and compliance.
• Ability to move quickly while preserving trust and repeatability.

Responsibilities

• Identify required data sources, systems of record, reference data, documents, logs, and operational data.
• Assess data availability, quality, completeness, sensitivity, lineage, and access constraints.
• Build pipelines, transformations, data products, retrieval indexes, or semantic layers needed by the solution.
• Partner with AI Engineer on RAG, embeddings, vector stores, grounding strategies, and data refresh patterns.
• Partner with security, privacy, compliance, and data governance teams to ensure proper data handling.
• Create synthetic, masked, de-identified, or test datasets where needed.
• Build data quality checks, monitoring, lineage documentation, and exception-handling patterns.
• Prepare data assets and documentation for steady-state ownership.

Skills

Bachelor or 5+ yrs exp

Data pipelines

SQL

APIs

Batch/Streaming

Cloud data platforms

Data modeling

Data governance

AI data patterns

Embeddings

Vector databases

Semantic retrieval

Data security

Privacy & compliance

Fast-paced delivery

Education

Bachelor's degree or higher

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

Position Summary

The Data Engineer makes the data usable, trusted, secure, and repeatable. This person handles data discovery, access, pipelines, transformations, quality checks, retrieval layers, metadata, and data-product readiness. In enterprise AI transformation, this role is often the difference between a flashy prototype and a solution that can scale. You will have the flexibility to work a hybrid schedule as you take on some tough challenges.

Primary Responsibilities

• Identify required data sources, systems of record, reference data, documents, logs, and operational data
• Assess data availability, quality, completeness, sensitivity, lineage, and access constraints
• Build pipelines, transformations, data products, retrieval indexes, or semantic layers needed by the solution
• Partner with AI Engineer on RAG, embeddings, vector stores, grounding strategies, and data refresh patterns
• Partner with security, privacy, compliance, and data governance teams to ensure proper data handling
• Create synthetic, masked, de-identified, or test datasets where needed
• Build data quality checks, monitoring, lineage documentation, and exception-handling patterns
• Support control-group testing and value measurement by ensuring baseline and treatment data are reliable
• Prepare data assets and documentation for steady-state ownership

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree OR 5+ years of software engineering experience
• 5+ years of experience in data engineering skills across pipelines, SQL, APIs, batch/streaming patterns, and cloud data platforms
• 3+ years of experience with data modeling, data quality, lineage, metadata, and governance
• 2+ years of experience with AI data patterns, including embeddings, vector databases, document chunking, semantic retrieval, and feature preparation
• 2+ years of experience in understanding enterprise data security, privacy, access control, and compliance
• Ability to move quickly while preserving trust and repeatability

Preferred Qualifications

• Data engineer, analytics engineer, platform data engineer, data product engineer, or FDE with strong data specialization
• Experience working with complex enterprise data environments
• Experience supporting AI, analytics, reporting, automation, or workflow products

Success Measures

• Required data is available and trusted
• Data pipelines and retrieval layers are repeatable and supportable
• AI outputs are grounded in the right information
• Data quality issues are identified early
• Control-group and value-measurement data are reliable
• Data assets are ready for production and steady-state handoff
• All Telecommuters will be required to adhere to UnitedHealth Group's Telecommuter Policy.

Pay is based on several factors including but not limited to local labor markets, education, work experience, certifications, etc. In addition to your salary, we offer benefits such as, a comprehensive benefits package, incentive and recognition programs, equity stock purchase and 401k contribution (all benefits are subject to eligibility requirements). No matter where or when you begin a career with us, you'll find a far-reaching choice of benefits and incentives. The salary for this role will range from $91,700 to $163,700 annually based on full‑time employment. We comply with all minimum wage laws as applicable.

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.

UnitedHealth Group is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer under applicable law and qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, national origin, religion, age, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by local, state, or federal laws, rules, or regulations.

UnitedHealth Group is a drug - free workplace. Candidates are required to pass a drug test before beginning employment.

#RPO #Yellow