Optum is a global leader in health care innovation, developing cutting-edge solutions to improve health systems. The Senior Director of Software Engineering will provide enterprise engineering leadership, overseeing cross-functional teams and ensuring platform stability, modernization, and operational excellence.
Responsibilities:
- Provide enterprise engineering leadership for the OCPN platform, overseeing 10-12 cross‑functional teams across Software Engineering, QA, DevOps, and Site Reliability Engineering
- Own end‑to‑end accountability for delivery of client enhancements, regulatory mandates, new product capabilities, and strategic modernization initiatives
- Establish, enforce, and continuously evolve engineering standards, SDLC governance, and quality frameworks to ensure reliability, maintainability, security, and audit readiness
- Drive predictable, metrics‑based execution using delivery, quality, reliability, and cost efficiency indicators (e.g., velocity, defect trends, availability, DORA metrics)
- Partner with Product Management and Architecture to define and execute multi‑year platform roadmaps aligned to business strategy and enterprise technology direction
- Set technical direction and ensure adoption of modern engineering practices including cloud‑native architectures, CI/CD automation, API‑first design, and scalable platform patterns
- Build organizational engineering capability by continuously improving tools, practices, and technical standards across the platform
- Own production stability, availability, and operational health for the OCPN platform across all client implementations
- Lead enterprise‑grade incident management, root‑cause analysis, and continuous improvement initiatives to reduce MTTR and prevent recurrence
- Ensure platform compliance with PCI, SOC, HIPAA (as applicable), and enterprise security standards for sensitive financial and healthcare payment data
- Champion best practices in observability, monitoring, capacity planning, and operational readiness
- Drive high‑availability, resiliency, and disaster recovery strategies aligned with Optum enterprise resilience requirements
- Maintain solid operational governance and transparency around risk posture and remediation plans
- Lead transformation of legacy systems through cloud migration, architectural modernization, and platform re‑architecture initiatives
- Drive adoption of automation‑first engineering practices to improve developer productivity, operational efficiency, and delivery speed
- Sponsor and govern the use of AI/ML‑enabled engineering tools to enhance productivity, quality assurance, risk detection, and delivery forecasting
- Partner with Enterprise Architecture to ensure alignment with Optum technology standards, security frameworks, and long‑term digital strategy
- Balance modernization execution with production stability and regulatory delivery commitments
- Build, develop, and retain high‑performing engineering leaders, managers, and senior technical talent
- Foster a culture of accountability, inclusion, continuous learning, and operational ownership
- Lead workforce planning, talent acquisition, performance management, and succession planning
- Drive organizational maturity across Agile execution, DevSecOps, and platform ownership models
- Establish scalable leadership structures and operating models to support platform growth and increasing complexity
- Partner with Business, Product, Operations, Security, Compliance, and Finance leaders to align engineering outcomes with enterprise objectives
- Communicate delivery health, risk posture, operational performance, and modernization progress to executive stakeholders
- Represent OCPN Engineering in strategic planning forums, governance councils, and enterprise transformation initiatives
- Ensure transparent risk management, proactive mitigation planning, and informed executive decision‑making
Requirements:
- 12+ years of progressive software engineering experience, including 5+ years in senior people leadership roles managing managers
- Demonstrated ownership of a platform modernization and transformation, large scale integration with a externally hosted SaaS platform, accountable end to end from architecture through production
- Demonstrated experience modernizing or scaling a transaction heavy platform that could not meet business growth, performance, or reliability needs
- Proven direct leadership of 15-25 engineers, including 3-4 direct manager reports within a multi-layer organization
- Proven end to end platform accountability for reliability, stability, availability, observability and operational health of mission critical systems
- Demonstrated hands on technical leadership capability-able to direct teams on architectural and technical decisions and operate credibly with senior engineers
- Experience integrating internal platforms with third party SaaS vendors, serving as the technical and execution bridge between systems
- Proven deep understanding of secure SDLC and DevSecOps practices, with experience operating in regulated environments (e.g., PCI, SOC, HIPAA)
- Experience leading cross‑functional delivery across Product, Architecture, Operations, and Security, serving as the primary engineering counterpart for senior business stakeholders on platform roadmap, delivery milestones, and operational outcomes
- Ability to represent the platform in senior leadership forums, including architecture reviews and executive updates; occasional travel for leadership meetings
- Demonstrated scaled engineering leadership capability by hiring, developing, and retaining managers and senior engineers, including ownership of succession planning, performance management, and leadership readiness
- Experience with commercial payment networks or financial transaction platforms
- Leadership of platform integration teams responsible for external data exchange, validation, and vendor testing
- Demonstrated background in SaaS to enterprise integration models, including shared responsibility vendor operating models
- Experience leading distributed or hybrid teams across multiple locations
- Accountability for platform modernization initiatives replacing or augmenting legacy systems
- Demonstrated familiarity with high availability, high correctness platforms where uptime and data integrity are critical