Associate Software Engineer

UnitedHealth Group • Minneapolis, MN

1d • $60,200 - $107,400 • Remote

About The Position

Optum is seeking an Associate Software Engineer to design, develop, and operate secure cloud platform services and software, including production AI solutions. The role focuses on integrating large language models and machine learning models, building agentic workflows and retrieval-augmented generation capabilities, and ensuring that AI features are evaluated, monitored, secure, and aligned with responsible AI and data governance practices. This position can be performed remotely from anywhere within the United States, subject to UnitedHealth Group’s Telecommuter Policy.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree or at least 4 years of experience as a Software Engineer.
• At least 2 years of experience in AI/ML development, including model integration, evaluation, and deployment.
• At least 2 years of experience with LLM integration, including tool/function calling, structured outputs, prompt engineering, and RAG.
• At least 2 years of experience with LangGraph or similar frameworks for orchestrating multi-step LLM workflows and agentic patterns.
• At least 2 years of experience with embeddings and vector search or vector databases to support AI features such as RAG.
• At least 2 years of experience with Python.
• Telecommuters must adhere to UnitedHealth Group’s Telecommuter Policy.
• Candidates must pass a drug test before beginning employment.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and operate secure cloud platform services and software that meet business requirements.
• Ensure technical solutions align with architectural principles, design patterns, and enterprise security requirements.
• Streamline processes, reduce technical debt, and standardize patterns.
• Automate repetitive tasks, monitor applications, simplify work practices, define metrics, and ensure application operational quality.
• Design, develop, and deploy AI solutions in Python, including services integrating LLMs and ML models into production applications.
• Build and maintain agentic workflows using LangGraph and related libraries to orchestrate multi-step LLM interactions, tool use, state management, and human-in-the-loop review.
• Implement LLM integration patterns, including tool/function calling, structured outputs, retrieval, and prompt engineering.
• Develop RAG capabilities, including document ingestion pipelines, embeddings, vector search, and grounding responses in approved enterprise data sources.
• Establish offline and online evaluation and monitoring for AI features, including automated tests, quality metrics, latency and cost tracking, and regression detection.
• Support model lifecycle and MLOps practices, including model selection and versioning, deployment automation, CI/CD integration, and secure management of secrets, keys, and model endpoints.
• Apply responsible AI and data governance practices, including privacy-by-design, security controls, explainability where applicable, and mitigation of bias, hallucinations, and prompt-injection risks.
• Manage platform-level security controls to enable secure, efficient, and policy-compliant operations.
• Collaborate with partner teams to communicate information security guidance and standards and reduce information security risks.
• Comply with employment contract terms, company policies and procedures, and company directives.

Benefits

• Comprehensive benefits package, subject to eligibility requirements.
• Incentive and recognition programs, subject to eligibility requirements.
• Equity stock purchase, subject to eligibility requirements.
• 401(k) contribution, subject to eligibility requirements.
• Career development opportunities.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Entry Level