Specialty Benefits Director of Software Engineering

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.
Join our forward-thinking engineering organization as a Director / Sr. Principal Software Engineer, where you will lead the modernization of acquired technology stacks, drive adoption of enterprise standards, and champion the infusion of AI across the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). This role is ideal for a transformational engineering leader with the vision to elevate engineering practices, the technical expertise to modernize systems, and the leadership skills to align teams toward delivering measurable business value.
Primary Responsibilities:

• Technology Modernization & Alignment
  • Lead the modernization of acquired technology stacks to align with enterprise engineering standards, ensuring scalability, reliability, and long-term sustainability
• AI-Driven SDLC Transformation
  • Infuse AI-first approaches throughout the SDLC, enabling teams to leverage enterprise-approved AI tools for coding, testing, automation, and reporting. Continuously evaluate emerging AI capabilities to drive innovation and productivity
• Engineering Leadership & Change Agent
  • Act as a transformational leader to embed modern engineering practices, establish structure, and enable teams to deliver excellent outcomes. Drive cultural adoption of automation, continuous improvement, and innovation
• Global Team Leadership
  • Oversee global engineering teams (U.S. and India), fostering collaboration, knowledge sharing, and high performance across distributed teams
• Delivery & Quality Excellence
  • Ensure on-time, high-quality delivery of enterprise-grade software solutions by championing best practices in code quality, security, performance optimization, and operational diagnostics
• Architecture & Emerging Tech
  • Define and drive architecture blueprints, solution designs, and technology adoption strategies for distributed systems, APIs, event-driven architectures, and cloud-native platforms
• Business Partnership & Strategy Alignment
  • Serve as a trusted partner to business stakeholders, aligning technology initiatives with business objectives, customer needs, and enterprise strategies
• 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:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field
• 10+ years of software engineering experience, with 5+ years in leadership roles (Director, Principal, or equivalent)
• Solid hands-on experience with cloud-native architectures (Azure, AWS, or GCP) and modern development stacks (e.g., Java, Angular/React, Node.js, Postgres SQL, Containers, Kubernetes, Kafka)
• Experience with distributed systems design, performance optimization, and high-availability architectures
• Proven experience with DevOps, CI/CD pipelines, Infrastructure as Code (Terraform), and monitoring tools (Grafana, Prometheus, etc.)
• Deep understanding of security & compliance best practices in enterprise environments
• Proven expertise in technology modernization within large-scale, distributed enterprise environments
• Proven solid background in API design (RESTful, GraphQL, event-driven) and integrations
• Proven demonstrated success in infusing AI into SDLC processes, from design through testing and operations
• Proven excellent communication skills with the ability to influence technical and business stakeholders

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in the healthcare domain and working with healthcare claims data
• Hands-on experience with modern tools and platforms (ElasticSearch, NoSQL databases, Docker, Node.js, GraphQL)
• Experience improving customer experience metrics (e.g., NPS) through technology transformation initiatives
• Experience improving customer experience metrics (e.g., NPS) through technology transformation initiatives
• Proven ability to lead and mentor global agile teams across geographies
• Proven solid track record of collaboration with cross-functional stakeholders (security, product, business leaders)
• Proven solid analytical and troubleshooting skills in complex distributed environments
• Demonstrated ability to drive cultural and process change as a change agent

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.