Senior AI/ML Engineer

Job Description

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 AI is UnitedHealth Group's enterprise AI team. We are AI/ML scientists and engineers with deep expertise in AI/ML engineering for health care. We develop AI/ML solutions for the highest impact opportunities across UnitedHealth Group businesses including UnitedHealthcare, Optum Financial, Optum Health, Optum Insight, and Optum Rx. In addition to transforming the health care journey through responsible AI/ML innovation, our charter also includes developing and supporting an enterprise AI/ML development platform.

Optum AI team members:

- 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:

- Develop novel AI approaches for healthcare using both structured and unstructured data
- Build and test deep learning and traditional ML models in distributed computing environments
- Design and plan experiments, conduct statistical analysis and create data visualizations
- Communicate findings with business stakeholders and collaborate to develop solutions that meet customer needs
- Collaborate with the Responsible Use of AI (RUAI) team to ensure that the delivered solutions are compliant with company policies and standards
- Develop code and model documentation, patents and publications in scientific conferences and journals
- Collaborate with engineering teams to develop robust data pipelines of MLOps procedures for new solutions
- Stay up to date with latest technologies and literature
- 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:

- Undergraduate degree or equivalent experience
- MS in computer science or related quantitative field and 8+ years of industry/academic experience in AI/ML or a related field OR a PhD and 4+ years of experience
- 5+ years of experience with classical ML methods and deep learning 5+ years experience with deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow

Preferred Qualifications:

- Experience with LLM frameworks and/or NLP approaches such as text embedding and text classification
- Experience with distributed computing approaches such as Spark
- Experience with Snowflake and other relational databases
- Experience working on collaborative software projects using GitHub
- Proven solid technical communication skills

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.

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