Principal AI/ML Engineer

Optum Tech is a global leader in health care innovation. Our teams develop cutting-edge solutions that help people live healthier lives and help make the health system work better for everyone. From advanced data analytics and AI to cybersecurity, we use innovative approaches to solve some of health care's most complex challenges. Your contributions here have the potential to change lives. Ready to build the next breakthrough? Join us to start Caring. Connecting. Growing together.

Optum Insight partners with payers, providers, governments and life sciences companies to simplify and enhance clinical, administrative and financial processes through software-enabled services and analytics, while advancing value-based care. Our differentiated products, technology insights, clinical expertise and analytics support the entire health system - ultimately delivering better experiences for consumers.

Optum Insight Technology and Engineering is a critical function in Optum Insight driving the innovation and value we provide our customers and partners. This team is focused on products, solutions, platform / enabling capability development, product development lifecycle, engineering excellence and connectivity to Optum Technology. 

We are seeking a Principal AI/ML Engineer to join our Process Automation team, focused on designing and delivering intelligent automation solutions that drive operational efficiency across Optum's revenue cycle. In this role, you will work at the intersection of software engineering, robotic process automation (RPA), and apply AI translating complex business processes into scalable, maintainable automated workflows.

You don't need to arrive with RPA expertise - we provide structured training on UiPath and our automation platform. What we're looking for is a strong engineering foundation, sharp analytical thinking, and communication skills to bridge business stakeholders and technical teams effectively.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Design, build, and deploy Agentic chat workflows that will create Process Documentation and business cases for the approval to rapidly deploy RPA workflows using UiPath to automate revenue cycle and back-office business processes
• Integrate AI and machine learning capabilities into automation pipelines to handle unstructured data, decision logic, and exception handling
• Develop reusable automation components, frameworks, and libraries that accelerate delivery across the team
• Apply software engineering best practices - version control, code review, unit testing, CI/CD - to automation assets
• Collaborate with business stakeholders to understand end-to-end processes, document requirements, and identify automation opportunities
• Translate ambiguous business requirements into structured technical specifications and automation designs
• Perform process discovery and current-state analysis to evaluate feasibility, complexity, and ROI of automation candidates
• Proactively identify edge cases, failure modes, and process risks before implementation
• Serve as a bridge between business process owners and the engineering team - translating technical concepts for non-technical audiences and business context for technical teams
• Communicate project status, risks, and tradeoffs clearly and proactively to team leads and stakeholders
• Participate actively in Agile ceremonies: sprint planning, standups, retrospectives, and backlog refinement
• Collaborate closely with architects, senior developers, QA, and operations teams to deliver high-quality solutions
• Contribute to documentation including process design documents, runbooks, and knowledge base articles
• Stay current with emerging AI tooling, LLM integrations, and automation platform capabilities (UiPath, Azure AI, etc.)
• Identify opportunities to enhance existing automations with AI-driven capabilities such as intelligent document processing, NLP, and predictive analytics
• Participate in post-implementation reviews and incorporate lessons learned into future builds
• Collaborate with research, engineering, and product teams to translate cutting-edge AI advancements into production-ready capabilities. Uphold ethical AI principles by embedding fairness, transparency, and accountability throughout the model development lifecycle.
   

You'll be rewarded and recogn