Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Optum delivers technology-enabled care, pharmacy benefits, data, and resources that help millions of people live healthier lives. The Director, Data Engineering & AI leads enterprise data platform strategy, architecture, governance, and execution to enable analytics, machine learning, and generative AI while managing engineering teams and enterprise transformation. The role also oversees data products, stakeholder engagement, operational management, innovation, and talent development.
Responsibilities
- Define and drive the enterprise data engineering and AI platform vision
- Establish scalable data architectures to support analytics, machine learning, GenAI, and agentic AI solutions
- Ensure data platforms are cloud-native, secure, resilient, and cost-efficient
- Build AI-ready data foundations including semantic layers, metadata, lineage, and knowledge graphs
- Lead multiple data engineering teams responsible for ingestion, transformation, storage, and consumption of enterprise data
- Establish engineering standards, best practices, and reusable frameworks
- Oversee development of data pipelines, data products, APIs, and real-time streaming solutions
- Drive modernization from legacy platforms to cloud-based architectures
- Partner with Data Science and AI teams to operationalize ML and GenAI solutions
- Build feature stores, vector databases, embedding pipelines, and RAG architectures
- Enable model training, deployment, monitoring, and lifecycle management
- Define standards for AI observability, explainability, and responsible AI
- Establish data quality, stewardship, lineage, cataloging, and master data management processes
- Ensure compliance with regulatory, privacy, and security requirements
- Implement governance frameworks for AI training data and AI-generated outputs
- Drive trusted and certified data asset programs
- Champion a data-as-a-product mindset
- Define ownership, SLAs, and quality standards for enterprise data products
- Prioritize investments based on business value and AI-readiness
- Measure adoption, quality, and business impact of data products
- Evaluate emerging technologies in GenAI, Agentic AI, Data Fabric, Semantic Layer, Knowledge Graphs, and Intelligent Automation
- Lead proof-of-concepts and enterprise-scale deployment strategies
- Drive automation of engineering operations using AI-powered tooling
- Promote innovation culture across engineering teams
- Partner with business, product, analytics, and technology leaders to identify AI-powered opportunities
- Translate business objectives into scalable data and AI capabilities
- Communicate technology strategy and value realization to executive leadership
- Influence investment decisions and roadmap priorities
- Own platform budgets, vendor management, and resource planning
- Optimize cloud costs and platform utilization
- Establish KPIs for platform reliability, performance, and productivity
- Ensure operational excellence and adherence to SLAs
- Recruit, mentor, and develop high-performing data engineering and AI engineering teams
- Build organizational capabilities in cloud, analytics, MLOps, GenAI, and data governance
- Create career growth paths and succession plans
- Foster a culture of innovation, accountability, and continuous learning
- Data quality and reliability
- AI adoption and business value realization
- Platform availability and performance
- Data product usage and customer satisfaction
- Engineering productivity and automation
- Cloud cost optimization
- Regulatory and governance compliance
- Team engagement and retention
Skills
- • Undergraduate degree or equivalent experience
- • Hands-on experience with AI, creating agentic solutions
- • Solid knowledge of Unix and shell scripting
- • Solid understanding of DWH principles, Spark/Databricks, Azure Architecture
- • Solid understanding of Data Architecture and Azure Cloud
- • Understanding of QA and testing automation process
- • Understanding and knowledge of Agile
- • All employees working remotely will be required to adhere to UnitedHealth Group's Telecommuter Policy
Benefits
- Comprehensive benefits package
- Incentive and recognition programs
- Equity stock purchase
- 401k contribution
- Remote work from anywhere within the U.S.
- Career development opportunities
- Development for other roles you may be interested in
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