Senior Data Scientist, Product Innovation

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. 

As a Fortune 5 business, we’re one of the world’s leading healthcare companies. There are no limits here on the resources you’ll have or the challenges you’ll encounter.

We have been supporting global healthcare systems from Ireland and the UK for more than 20 years, building a dynamic and diverse team of more than 2,100 talented individuals. With a continued record of growth and stability, we’re on the constant lookout for fresh talent to join our expanding teams.

The Senior Data Scientist will be part of the Advisory Board, which helps health care leaders across the health care ecosystem work smarter and faster through provocative insights, actionable strategies, and practical tools to support execution. This individual will possess strong analytical and critical thinking skills as well as a passion for innovation. The data scientist will partner with leaders on the Quantitative Insights (QI) team to identify opportunities for methodological improvement, independently develop and iterate on complex models, and ensure ongoing quality of our analytical offerings. 

Schedule: Full-time position with standard working hours of Monday – Friday, standard business hours. There will be a requirement to be flexible due to working with a Global Team.

Careers with Optum offer flexible work arrangements and individuals who live and work in the Republic of Ireland will have the opportunity to split their monthly work hours between our Letterkenny or Dublin office and telecommuting from a home-based office in a hybrid work model.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Product innovation:
• Identify opportunities for improvement in analytical tools and research methodologies
• Serve as an expert resource to Advisory Board researchers, data analysts, and engineers
• Scope and project manage work to deliver on tool enhancements and research initiatives
• Partner with engineers and developers to build analyses into scalable tools and data pipelines
• Prototype new products and solutions
• Maintain familiarity with the state-of-the-art around big data analytics and associated technologies and techniques
•  Data analysis and modeling:
• Use AI/ML methods to develop scalable analytical tools and research
• Develop numerical/statistical programs to support analytical and research work
• Analyze large healthcare datasets (e.g. claims, EHR, other)
• Build datasets by connecting tables from across sources
• Collaboration
• Partner with research teams to surface ideas and use data analysis to produce future-oriented insights
• Act as thought partner to management team on future direction of team and role
• Be an independent thinker and advocate of data science methods and applications
• Build and maintain relationships with Optum and UHG colleagues as teams partners on projects and analysis
• Ability to articulate and paint a vision, with strong communication and presentation skills, as well as strengths in translating highly complex concepts, results, models and technologies in ways that can be understood by a variety of audiences

You will be rewarded and recognised 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 providing development for other roles you may be interested in.

Required Qualifications: 

• Bachelor’s degree (or higher) in a relevant subject OR Equivalent experience
• Proven experience in data analysis and modeling
• Ability to perform statistical modelling and analysis of datasets
• Ability to work on AI/ML use cases
• Background in machine learning and statistics
• Foundation in data structures and algorithms
• Extensive programming experience with Python/Pyspark or other analytics languages
• Ability to write complex SQL queries
• Experience designing and executing analyses on large data sets

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in large-scale data analysis and machine learning
• Experience with supervised and unsupervised learning methods for model build and deployment
• Master of Science (or higher) in computer science, Engineering, Statistics, or related field
• Experience in Redshift, S3, Glue, and other AWS applications
• Understanding of raw health care claims data, including Medicare and commercial data sets
• Experience building analytical products
• Experience with user testing 
• Demonstrated depth of health care knowledge and expertise

Soft Skills:

• Written and oral communication skills

Please note you must currently be eligible to work and remain indefinitely without any restrictions in the country to which you are making an application. Proof will be required to support your application.

All telecommuters will be required to adhere to the UnitedHealth Group’s Telecommuter Policy.

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 marginalised 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. 

Diversity creates a healthier atmosphere: Optum is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to gender, civil status, family status, sexual orientation, disability, religion, age, race, and membership of the Traveller community, or any other characteristic protected by law. Optum is a drug-free workplace. © 2023 Optum Services (Ireland) Limited. All rights reserved.

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