Senior Director, AI Enablement - Remote

UnitedHealth Group is a health care and well-being company that's dedicated to improving the health outcomes of millions around the world. We are comprised of two distinct and complementary businesses, UnitedHealthcare and Optum, working to build a better health system for all. Here, your contributions matter as they will help transform health care for years to come. Make an impact with a team that shares your passion for helping others. Join us to start Caring. Connecting. Growing together.

Senior Director, AI Enablement to help shape the next phase of our People reimagination as we move toward an AI-first HR operating model. This leader will build and lead the People-side capability responsible for identifying, designing, governing, and scaling AI-enabled experiences, intelligent workflows, and agentic solutions across the People function.

This role sits within the People Digital capability and will serve as the senior leader responsible for translating AI opportunity into practical, responsible, and measurable People outcomes. The role will work across HR COEs, shared services, payroll, People Analytics, Strategy and Operations, Culture, Tech, Legal, Privacy, Risk, and enterprise AI teams to ensure that AI is deployed in ways that improve employee and manager experience, strengthen service delivery, reduce operational friction, and maintain strong controls.

This is not a pure technology role and it is not a traditional HRIS role. It requires a leader who can connect business strategy, workflow design, AI opportunity, operating model change, and governance into a coherent People agenda.

You'll enjoy the flexibility to work remotely * from anywhere within the U.S. as you take on some tough challenges.  

Primary Responsibilities:

• AI strategy and portfolio leadership
  • Define and lead the People-side AI strategy in alignment with the broader People reimagination and AI-first HR operating model 
  • Build and manage the People AI use-case portfolio, including prioritization of copilots, agents, intelligent workflows, and AI-enabled service experiences 
  • Identify where AI can create meaningful value for employees, managers, shared services, COEs, and the People leadership team 
  • Establish prioritization criteria based on business impact, feasibility, risk, readiness, and alignment to enterprise strategy 
• Intelligent workflow and agentic experience design
  • Lead the design of intelligent workflows that connect employee intent, policy logic, service delivery, and platform execution across the People technology ecosystem 
  • Define how AI-enabled experiences should operate across Eva (internal orchestration layer), MyHR (Oracle HCM), ServiceNow, and related People technologies 
  • Oversee People-side design for conversational flows, prompt intent, escalation logic, guided experiences, and next-best-action capabilities 
  • Ensure workflows are designed to improve self-service, manager-service, shared services efficiency, and end-to-end journey outcomes 
• Governance, controls, and risk management
  • Establish and lead the People AI governance model, including risk classification, human-in-the-lead requirements, review gates, and control standards 
  • Partner with Legal, Privacy, Risk, Security, and enterprise AI governance teams to ensure AI-enabled HR solutions are safe, compliant, auditable, and trustworthy 
  • Define clear boundaries for where AI can advise, automate, recommend, escalate, or stop 
  • Ensure People AI use cases are grounded in approved policy, trusted business data, and appropriate knowledge sources 
• Operating model and cross-functional integration
  • Serve as the primary People Digital leader for AI across HR COEs, shared services, payroll, People Analytics, and Tech 
  • Partner with Strategy and Operations to translate process intent into intelligent workflows 
  • Partner with Employee Experience / Culture to ensure AI-enabled experiences align to persona needs and experience principles 
  • Partner with shared services to redesign work across agent, human-agent, and human tiers 
  • Partner with Tech on enterprise AI platforms, architecture, integration patterns, security, and reusable technical capabilities 
• Change, adoption, and value realization
  • Define what success looks like for People AI initiatives, including experience, producti