Lead AI Software Engineer - Remote

Optum is hiring a Lead AI Software Engineer to lead the adoption and delivery of responsible AI solutions for healthcare. The role combines generative AI and traditional machine learning, provides technical direction and governance, and owns the quality and operational excellence of production AI software.

Responsibilities:

• Lead AI/ML adoption for the team - designing, developing, testing, deploying, and maintaining AI-powered solutions that combine Generative AI and traditional ML techniques
• Provide technical leadership for AI initiatives (e.g., conversational AI/chatbots, predictive analytics, intelligent automation), partnering with product management, architecture, and engineering leadership to solve healthcare-specific challenges
• Build responsible AI solutions and services for the Provider community, ensuring compliance with ethical and regulatory standards, and lead AI governance, model lifecycle management, and production support
• Evaluate and leverage emerging cloud AI/ML offerings to deliver efficient, cost-effective solutions, including integrating AI into broader cloud modernization and digital-first initiatives
• Drive alignment between AI initiatives and enterprise strategy, independently prioritizing and planning work against business objectives
• Own the quality and operational excellence of AI software deliverables in production
• Mentor and train team members on AI/ML technologies, frameworks, and responsible AI practices

Requirements:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
• 12+ years of software engineering experience, including 4+ years focused on AI/ML engineering
• 4+ years delivering enterprise-scale AI, ML, Data, or Cloud platforms in production
• 3+ years in a technical leadership role - setting technical direction, leading engineering teams, and mentoring engineers
• Hands-on experience with Generative AI, including 3+ years with LLMs, NLP, and AI architecture, and 2+ years of applied experience with agentic AI patterns, RAG, and AI orchestration/automation frameworks
• Experience with cloud-native AI/ML services and infrastructure across major providers - e.g., managed GenAI/ML platforms (AWS Bedrock/SageMaker, Azure OpenAI Service/Azure ML, GCP Vertex AI), serverless compute (Lambda/Azure Functions/Cloud Functions), container orchestration (ECS/EKS, AKS, GKE), managed search/vector stores (OpenSearch, Azure AI Search, Elasticsearch), and object storage (S3, Blob Storage, Cloud Storage)
• Experience with AI governance, model lifecycle management, and production operationalization/support processes
• Strong Python development skills and familiarity with enterprise-scale AI/ML platforms
• Experience scoping and delivering large, cross-team AI initiatives
• Exposure to healthcare payer, claims, provider operations, utilization management, or other regulated industries
• Experience driving enterprise cloud modernization or platform transformation initiatives
• Strong stakeholder communication and cross-functional collaboration skills