[Hiring] Lead AI/ML Engineer @UnitedHealth Group

Role Description

We are seeking a lead AI/ML engineer who can bring deep expertise across the full development lifecycle of machine learning and generative AI-based solutions from design to development to MLOps. CDS is an area that truly touches payers, providers, as well as members and one where you can have a huge impact on improving the healthcare system for everyone.

You’ll enjoy the flexibility to work remotely from anywhere within the U.S. as you take on some tough challenges. For all hires in the Minneapolis or Washington, D.C. area, you will be required to work in the office a minimum of four days per week.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Drive end-to-end generative AI and machine learning projects that have a high degree of ambiguity, scale, and complexity.
• Design robust AI architectures, ensuring that systems are scalable, secure, and efficient; select appropriate technologies, frameworks, and methodologies.
• Build machine learning models; perform proof-of-concept experiments; optimize and deploy models to production; partner with software engineers to productionize ML models.
• Perform hands-on analysis and modeling of healthcare data sets to develop insights that increase business value.
• Run A/B experiments, gather data, and perform statistical analysis; continuously assess AI system performance and optimize algorithms and models to improve accuracy and efficiency.
• Establish scalable, efficient, automated processes for large-scale data analysis, machine learning model development and validation, and MLOps.
• Research and implement innovative machine learning approaches.
• Mentor and help recruit AI/ML scientists and machine learning engineers to the team.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field.
• 10+ years of industry/academic experience in machine learning or a related field.
• 5+ years of experience building models for business applications.
• 5+ years of experience leading technical teams.
• Proven advanced understanding of Deep Learning with applications in NLP and multimodal modeling.
• Proven solid Python programming skills and experience with deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow and big data processing tools like Hadoop and Spark.
• Practical experience with AI technology stacks and deployment and operations methodologies in public cloud (Microsoft Azure technology stack preferred).
• Experience with state-of-the-art ML algorithms and architectures (e.g., Transformers/LLMs, state space models such as Mamba, GNNs), including hands-on transformer fine-tuning, legacy architecture maintenance/migration, and tradeoffs between pretraining from scratch vs. adapting existing foundations.
• Proven in-depth knowledge of generative AI and large language models (LLMs), with a focus on LLM optimization.
• Solid experience working with unstructured text at scale (e.g., clinical notes, documents, policies, or similar natural-language-heavy domains).

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience applying AI/ML in the health care sector.
• Experience working with cross-functional and distributed teams in a global and diverse environment.
• Experience establishing AI/ML best practices, standards, and ethical guidelines.
• Proven solid communication skills to articulate technical concepts to engineers and non-technical stakeholders.

Requirements

• 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 (all benefits are subject to eligibility requirements).

Application Deadline

This will be posted for a minimum of 2 business days or until a sufficient candidate pool has been collected. Job posting may come down early due to volume of applicants.