Lead Software Engineer

Optum is hiring a Lead Software Engineer to drive operational excellence, platform reliability, and system performance across enterprise applications. The role leads release management, incident response, disaster recovery, and development of enterprise-scale software and AI-powered solutions while collaborating across Development, Operations, DevOps, and Security teams.

Responsibilities:

• Design, develop, and deploy enterprise-scale software solutions and AI-powered platform automations to address complex operational and business challenges with emphasis on responsible AI use
• Leverage enterprise-approved AI tools to automate deployment tasks, streamline incident response workflows, and drive continuous system optimization
• Lead production war rooms for critical P1 and P2 incidents, driving rapid service restoration, comprehensive Root Cause Analysis (RCA) publishing, and leadership presentations
• Coordinate end-to-end release activities, including change ticket management, deployment planning, execution, and approval follow-ups
• Evaluate emerging technical trends and AI solutions to inform architecture design, platform modernization, and legacy-to-cloud transformations
• Plan and execute Stage and Production Disaster Recovery (DR) exercises, business continuity failover plans, and system availability strategies
• Collaborate with Dev and DevOps teams to perform automated security scans, remediate application vulnerabilities, and coordinate product lifecycle management (PLM) activities
• Manage message streaming platforms (e.g., Kafka topic onboarding and data pipeline mappings) and oversee vendor partner service requests
• Participate in and lead Site Leadership Owner (SLO) governance meetings, operational discussions, and periodic health reviews

Requirements:

• 10+ years with expertise in Java, RESTful APIs, and microservices architectures
• 2+ years of experience leading engineering teams, technical initiatives, platform ownership functions, or site operational leadership (SLO)
• 2+ years of experience managing production support operations, leading P1/P2 war rooms, managing change approval workflows, and conducting Root Cause Analysis (RCA)
• 2+ years of experience with database design, tuning, and troubleshooting (SQL Server) and cloud platforms (Azure preferred)
• 1+ years of experience designing, developing, or deploying AI-powered tools, automations, or machine learning integrations within enterprise workflows
• 1+ hands-on experience with CI/CD pipelines, ITIL change management processes (e.g., ServiceNow), and enterprise observability platforms (e.g., Datadog, Dynatrace, Splunk, App Insights)
• 15+ years of software engineering experience in enterprise-scale applications (or Bachelor's degree in Computer Science/related field plus 8+ years of experience)
• Demonstrated experience leading legacy transformations, stored procedure-to-API migrations, and modern cloud platform adoptions
• Experience managing event-driven streaming platforms (e.g., Kafka) and data integration pipelines
• Proven track record of planning and executing Disaster Recovery (DR) testing and high-availability failover strategies
• Industry technical certifications in Cloud Architecture (Azure/AWS), DevOps, or ITIL Frameworks