Senior AI/ML Engineer

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 diversity and inclusion, talented peers, comprehensive benefits and career development opportunities. Come make an impact on the communities we serve as you help us advance health equity on a global scale. Join us to start Caring. Connecting. Growing together

Optum AI team members in QEC team:

• Have impact at scale: We have the data and resources to make an impact at scale. When our solutions are deployed, they have the potential to make health care system work better for everyone
  Do ground-breaking work: Many of our current projects involve cutting edge ML, NLP and LLM techniques.
• Generative AI methods for working with structured and unstructured health care data are continuously being developed and improved. We are working in one of the most important frontiers of AI/ML research and development
• Partner with world-class experts on innovative solutions: Our team members are developing novel AI/ML solutions to business challenges. In some cases, this includes the opportunity to file patents and publish papers about the methods we develop. We also collaborate with AI/ML researchers at some of the world’s top universities

Primary Responsibilities:

• Help design and develop the next generation of ML, NLP & GENAI products, and AI based services for healthcare & Pharmacy division
• Develop machine learning and deep learning models and systems in domains including, but not limited to: NLP, NLU, NLG, SLU and multidimensional time series forecasting among others
• Ability to Quantize, Optimize GenAI models
• Manage NLP & ML models lifecycle for a suite of products
• Run large complex proof-of-concepts leveraging on-premise & cloud technologies for the healthcare business
• Manage prioritization and technology work for building ML ,NLP & GenAI and AI based products
• Lead the full end-to-end AI product development process including data ingestion and transformation, feature engineering, analysis and modeling, model deployment, Testing, performance monitoring and documentation
• Build end to end pipeline with RAG & Vector DB for retrieval implementation & leveraging LLM for data generation
• Establish best practices for end-to-end machine learning, deep learning and GenAI development cycle to ensure rigor in process and quality in outcome
• Work with a great deal of autonomy to find solutions to complex problems
• 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 regards 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:

• Bachelors or Master’s in computer science, Statistics, Electrical Engineering, or another quantitative field
• 7+ years of industry/academic experience in data science, machine learning or a related field
• 5+ years of Python development
• 4+ years of experience with Machine Learning and Deep Learning modeling, Deep Learning Frameworks and Distributed training
• 4+ years of experience applying computational algorithms and statistical methods to both structured and unstructured data
• 3+ years of experience with AI Cloud services like Azure ML, Databricks, Azure OpenAI, or similar services in GCP / AWS
• 1+ years of experience in LLMs (Large Language Models) in cloud (Azure, GCP, AWS) and RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)
• Experience in designing and implementing effective prompts for LLMs to ensure optimal performance and accuracy
• Experience in data ingestion, transformation, and management processes
• Our team is looking for a Senior Machine Learning Engineer with deep subject matter expertise in text processing, NLU and SLU (Natural language understanding and Spoken Language Understanding) who will be part of a team leading the technical development and inventions that allow Optum machine learning products drive positive impact in the healthcare business
• Expertise will bring business and industry context to science and technology decisions. As part of the QEC  engineering group, you set the standard for scientific excellence and make decisions that affect the way we build and integrate algorithms. Your code, designs and documents are exemplary and are used as references across the organization
• A successful candidate is a hands-on AI/ML engineering expert that will tackle intrinsically hard problems, acquiring expertise as needed. The candidate will help decompose complex problems into straightforward solutions
• Exposure to Agentic AI frameworks like Microsoft AutoGen, LangChain, LangGraph and Semantic Kernel
• Proven excellent communication, writing and presentation skills
• Solid knowledge and practical implementation skills on Prompt design, Prompt engineering & optimization
  Have implemented In Context Learning (ICL) while designing prompts

Preferred Qualifications:

• MTech/PhD in Computer Science, Statistics, Electrical Engineering, or another quantitative field
• Experience in optimization of model performance and accuracy
• Experience in monitoring, testing and maintenance of AI models
• Experience with machine learning libraries/frameworks such as TensorFlow or PyTorch
• Familiarity with DevOps and managing Azure AI resources with terraform is a plus
• Experience in the health care industry
• Significant experience in deploying scalable solutions to complex problems, from defining the problem, implementing the solution, and launching the new product successfully
• Ability to build end to end AI solutions using Azure AI Foundry, Azure Databricks and Azure Data Factory
• Ability to mentor and trains scientists on complex technical issues

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.