Principal Software Engineer

UnitedHealth Group

Experience: 12+ yrs
Location: United States
Job type: Full-time

Required skills

Python
LangChain
LangGraph
ReACT
ReWOO
RAG
Azure
Function Apps
Cosmos DB
AKS
Docker
Kubernetes
CI/CD
observability
telemetry

About the role

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.

*Lead the design and delivery of next-generation Agentic AI systems and GenAI products.

Primary Responsibilities:

Architect & Innovate: Define and evolve the technical architecture for Agentic AI platforms leveraging Python, LangChain/LangGraph, and frameworks like ReACT, ReWOO, RAG, and A2A
Technical Leadership: Set the vision for prompt engineering, evaluation strategies, and reliability guardrails; review designs and contribute to critical code paths when needed
Cloud-Native Solutions: Design scalable, secure, and resilient solutions on Azure (Function Apps, Cosmos DB, AKS) with enterprise-grade observability and compliance
Performance & Scalability: Drive optimization of multi-turn conversational agents; establish benchmarks and performance KPIs
Engineering Excellence: Champion best practices—test coverage, coding standards, CI/CD quality gates - and foster a culture of continuous improvement
Delivery & Operations: Oversee modern DevOps practices (Docker/Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, security scans) and ensure production readiness
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with product, platform, and backend teams to integrate APIs and microservices; define SLAs and telemetry standards
Monitoring & Reliability: Implement observability for AI agent behavior (latency, hallucination rate, safety compliance); define SLOs and operational playbooks
Knowledge Management: Maintain architecture decision records, design documentation, and operational guides in a shared knowledge base
Leadership & Mentorship: Build and mentor a high-performing engineering team; facilitate architecture reviews, roadmap planning, and release readiness
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:

Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field; advanced degree preferred
Experience: 12+ years in software engineering with experience in AI/ML systems or large-scale distributed platforms; proven leadership in technical architecture and delivery
AI/ML Expertise:
- Solid hands-on proficiency in Python and AI agent frameworks (LangChain, LangGraph, ReACT, ReWOO, RAG)
- Deep understanding of LLM-driven architectures, prompt engineering, evaluation metrics, and reliability/safety guardrails
Cloud & Architecture:
- Extensive experience with Azure cloud-native services (Function Apps, Cosmos DB, AKS) and microservices architecture
- Familiarity with event-driven, serverless, and scalable design patterns
DevOps & Security:
- Proficiency in containerization (Docker/Kubernetes) and CI/CD pipelines with security/compliance gates
- Knowledge of observability frameworks, telemetry, and operational resilience
Performance & Optimization:
- Expertise in profiling, benchmarking, and optimizing for latency, throughput, and cost efficiency
Quality Engineering:
- Solid testing discipline (pytest), coverage targets, static analysis, and continuous quality gates
Leadership & Collaboration:
- Demonstrated ability to lead technical decisions, mentor engineers, and drive engineering excellence
- Demonstrated excellent communication and stakeholder management skills; ability to align architecture with business goals
Strategic Thinking:
- Demonstrated ability to balance hands-on technical depth with strategic leadership, roadmap planning, and cross-functional alignment

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.

About UnitedHealth Group

Provides health insurance and technology-enabled health care services.

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