Senior Software Engineer - Python, AI/ML

Requisition Number: 2371697
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.
Primary Responsibilities:

• Participate in creating solutions for functional and non-functional requirements
• Collaborate with the Scrum team in an agile development environment
• Contribute to continuous improvement of SDLC processes and methodologies
• Develop solutions with scalability and flexibility in mind
• Ensure development delivery meets expectations as defined in a User Story
• Attend and actively participate in all Sprint meetings (Refinement, Planning, Stand-up and Retrospective)
• Accountable to accept and deliver work within each sprint that closely matches planned capacity; escalate to Scrum Master and/or manager if there is an insufficient number of User Stories in the backlog to achieve this
• Quickly identify roadblocks/impediments and escalate to the Tech Lead or Scrum Master
• When engaged by Operations, assist with root cause analysis and resolution of production Incidents
• Application Development
  • Build and maintain robust backend services using Python, GitHub (Actions and Workflow) and Ansible
  • Understanding of Pydantic for data validation and structured development
  • Implement APIs and WebHooks for real-time integrations with external systems
• Cloud Configuration
  • Understanding of configuration of Azure and/or Google Cloud (GKE)
• Data & Messaging
  • Design and optimize data pipelines leveraging Kafka for event streaming and Redis for caching
  • Work with Postgres and SQL databases for structured and unstructured data storage
• Configuration & Automation
  • Use YAML for configuration management and deployment scripts
  • Implement CI/CD pipelines for automated testing and deployment
• Observability & Reliability
  • Integrate Dynatrace for monitoring and alerting across distributed systems
  • Apply best practices for system reliability and performance tuning
• Analytics
  • Collaborate with data teams to embed analytics capabilities into applications
  • Ensure efficient data ingestion and transformation for reporting and insights
• Innovation
  • Explore emerging technologies like Pydantic AI for structured AI-driven workflows
  • Contribute to architectural decisions and technology evaluations
• Comply with the terms and conditions of the employment contract, company policies and procedures, and any and all directives (such as, but not limited to, transfer and/or re-assignment to different work locations, change in teams and/or work shifts, policies in regard to flexibility of work benefits and/or work environment, alternative work arrangements, and other decisions that may arise due to the changing business environment). The Company may adopt, vary or rescind these policies and directives in its absolute discretion and without any limitation (implied or otherwise) on its ability to do so

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer science or similar field
• 2+ years in software engineering roles with a focus on backend development
• Proficiency in Python and experience with data analytics workflows
• Hands-on experience with Kafka, Redis, MongoDB, and SQL
• Familiarity with WebHooks, Prometheus, and YAML
• Skills:
  • Knowledge of Pydantic and emerging AI frameworks like Pydantic AI
  • Understanding of distributed systems, event-driven architecture, and observability practices

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with LangChain or similar orchestration frameworks
• Knowledge of prompt engineering and AI safety practices
• Familiarity with containerization (Docker/Kubernetes) for AI workloads
• Demonstrated knowledge of application design, application development and implementation
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, or Azure)
• Exposure to microservices architecture and API security best practices
• Understanding basic full stack development concepts
• Excellent human relations skills to effectively interact with management, peers, business partners and vendors

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.