Lead Software Engineer

Optum is a global organization that delivers care aided by technology to help millions of people live healthier lives. The Lead Software Engineer will be responsible for leading technical design and development of AI/ML-driven applications, collaborating with various teams to improve healthcare solutions.

Responsibilities:

• Lead technical design for epics/features; break down complex work into implementable increments and ensure delivery meets acceptance criteria and quality bars
• Remain hands-on building software in .NET and/or Python, contributing directly to critical services, pipelines, or UI components
• Influence engineering decisions across a team/domain, setting direction on architecture, patterns, and engineering standards while staying hands-on
• Mentor engineers through code/design reviews, pairing, and guidance on best practices in testing, performance, and operational readiness
• Demonstrate and utilize AI-based tools to improve the software development lifecycle
• Champion secure engineering and proactively identify/close security gaps in solution design and delivery
• Build and operate production-grade services and pipelines with strong reliability practices (observability, diagnostics, incident response readiness)
• Drive CI/CD and automated testing practices to improve delivery velocity without sacrificing safety and compliance
• Mentor and guide engineers; help develop strong engineering habits through coaching, pairing, code review rigor, and design guidance
• Fully participate in Agile ceremonies (standups, refinement, planning, retrospectives) and improve team execution and predictability
• Partner with product, architecture, SRE, security, data/AI teams, and stakeholders to align technical implementation with platform goals
• Communicate tradeoffs clearly and raise risks early, ensuring shared understanding across distributed teams

Requirements:

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience (or equivalent depth of experience delivering production systems)
• 5+ years of development experience with .NET, JavaScript, and/or Python (one may be primary; the others can be working proficiency)
• 4+ years of professional experience in at least one specialty area (pick one): Backend/API Engineering, Data engineering and Analytics, Front-end/web Engineering
• 3+ years of experience in relational databases (SQL)
• 3+ years of development and operational experience in the public cloud (Azure preferred)
• 2+ years of demonstrated ability to lead technical design and influence engineering decisions across a team/domain
• Comprehensive understanding of software engineering fundamentals: testing, CI/CD, secure coding, performance, and operational readiness
• Experience in healthcare
• Expert understanding of engineering fundamentals: unit testing, code reviews, telemetry, agile and DevOps
• Hands-on experience leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs)
• Experience with microservices and event-driven architecture (APIs, messaging) supporting high-availability systems
• Experience designing secure, compliant systems in regulated environments; demonstrated security-minded engineering
• Data/AI platform experience (e.g., building or operating analytics/ML pipelines and/or data products that enable monitoring and trustworthy delivery of insights)
• Infrastructure as Code and cloud automation (e.g., Terraform) for repeatable environments