AI Tech Lead (Modern AI Tech Stack) - Remote

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

Optum Advisory is seeking an AI Tech Lead to design, build, and scale modern AI solutions across payer and provider transformation initiatives. This is a hands on technical leadership role requiring deep involvement in architecture and engineering while leading globally distributed teams. The role focuses on delivering Generative AI, Agentic AI, and Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) solutions with enterprise grade reliability, security, and responsible AI practices.

You'll enjoy the flexibility to work remotely * from anywhere within the U.S. as you take on some tough challenges. For all hires in the Minneapolis or Washington, D.C. area, you will be required to work in the office a minimum of four days per week.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Technical Leadership & Architecture (Hands On)
  • Lead end to end design and implementation of AI solutions from concept through production
  • Define and own solution architecture for RAG pipelines, agentic workflows, tool calling, orchestration, and conversational context management
  • Establish and enforce engineering best practices including secure coding, code reviews, testing, performance optimization, and documentation
  • Partner with data and platform teams to align on governed data access, ingestion pipelines, and scalable AI architectures
• AI Engineering Delivery (GenAI, RAG, Agentic AI)
  • Build and optimize RAG solutions using embeddings, chunking strategies, retrieval, reranking, and grounding techniques
  • Implement evaluation frameworks and automated regression testing to measure AI quality, accuracy, and reliability
  • Design and enforce guardrails to minimize hallucinations and ensure response completeness and compliance
  • Guide model selection and tuning with focus on performance, latency, and cost efficiency
• Global Team Leadership
  • Lead and mentor onshore and offshore engineering teams delivering AI solutions
  • Drive agile execution including sprint planning, backlog management, delivery tracking, and risk mitigation
  • Provide technical coaching and career development to engineers across geographies
  • Act as the primary technical point of contact for complex delivery challenges
• Consulting & Stakeholder Engagement
  • Translate business problems into clear technical solutions and delivery plans
  • Communicate architecture decisions, progress, risks, and tradeoffs to technical and non technical stakeholders
  • Contribute reusable accelerators, reference architectures, and best practices across Optum Advisory engagements

You'll be rewarded and recognized for your performance in an environment that will challenge you and give you clear direction on what it takes to succeed in your role as well as provide development for other roles you may be interested in.

Required Qualifications:

• 8+ years of overall software engineering experience
• 3+ years delivering AI/ML or Generative AI solutions in production
• 2+ years in a technical leadership role (Tech Lead, Lead Engineer, or Engineering Manager)
• Demonstrated hands on experience with Python based backend development and API frameworks (Flask, FastAPI or equivalent)
• Experience with vector search and enterprise search solutions
• Proven experience building:
  • Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines
  • Agentic AI or multi step AI workflows
  • Evaluation and monitoring frameworks for AI quality
• Familiarity with data processing frameworks used in AI pipelines (e.g., Databricks or equivalent)
• Proven effective communication skills with ability to explain complex AI concepts to diverse stakeholders

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with AI orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex, or similar)
• Experience designing multi agent architectures and reusable AI platforms
• Experience working in healthcare or regulated environments
• Proven containerization and cloud native deployment (Docker; Kubernetes/AKS preferred)
• Demonstrated background delivering AI solutions on Azure cloud
• Proven ability to scale AI solutions across multiple teams and use cases

*All employees working remotely 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 $112,700to $193,200 annually based on full-time employment. We comply with all minimum wage laws as applicable.

Application Deadline: This will be posted for a minimum of 2 business days or until a sufficient candidate pool has been collected. Job posting may come down early due to volume of applicants.

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.