Optum, a global health optimization organization, is seeking a Senior Manager for AI/ML Engineering. Join a team dedicated to leveraging technology to improve health outcomes, connecting individuals with essential care, pharmacy benefits, and resources. This role offers a culture of inclusion, talented colleagues, comprehensive benefits, and significant career development opportunities.

As part of Optum, you'll contribute to advancing health optimization worldwide. The company's mission is to help people live healthier lives and enhance the effectiveness of the health system for all. UnitedHealth Group is committed to addressing health disparities and promoting equitable care.

This position is based in Hyderabad, Telangana, India, offering a chance to make a tangible impact on the communities served.

Lead the end-to-end implementation of AI/ML and Generative AI initiatives, translating opportunities into scalable technical solutions in collaboration with stakeholders.

Guide engineering teams on framework and technology selection, ensuring solutions meet stringent functional, scalability, privacy, and performance requirements. Drive the adoption of best practices, reusable assets, and accelerators.

Advance cloud adoption strategies for AI/ML workloads, enabling scalable deployment models through automation and infrastructure orchestration. Enhance engineering efficiency and optimize resource utilization.

Establish trustworthy AI practices, including model validation, transparency, monitoring, and risk mitigation. Promote responsible GenAI adoption for measurable business outcomes.

Oversee AI/ML roadmaps, manage dependencies, risks, priorities, and resource allocation. Provide leadership with visibility into delivery progress and business impact.

Build and mentor high-performing AI/ML engineering teams, fostering a culture of innovation and continuous improvement. Manage talent acquisition and technical capability growth. Partner with distributed teams for seamless execution.

A degree in a relevant field such as IT, Computer Science, Software Engineering, AI, Data Science, Engineering, or Mathematics, or equivalent experience is required.

Possess proven experience in software engineering, AI engineering, machine learning engineering, data engineering, or a closely related technical role. Demonstrated expertise in building solutions with large language models, generative AI, agentic AI patterns, or AI-powered automation.

Experience with prompt engineering, structured outputs, function calling, tool use, workflow orchestration, and solution evaluation is essential. You should also have experience integrating applications with APIs, databases, cloud services, and enterprise platforms.

Proficiency in Python and developing production-quality code, APIs, services, or reusable technical components is necessary. A solid understanding of retrieval-augmented generation, embeddings, vector databases, semantic search, and enterprise knowledge retrieval patterns is expected.

Familiarity with Agile/Scrum methodologies, cloud-based development, and responsible AI principles including data privacy, security, governance, monitoring, and risk management is vital. Strong analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills are a must.