Sr. Data Engineer

UnitedHealth Group•Eden Prairie, MN

5d•$91,700 - $163,700•Remote

About The Position

Optum Insight is improving the flow of health data and information to create a more connected system. We remove friction and drive alignment between care providers and payers, and ultimately consumers. Our deep expertise in the industry and innovative technology empower us to help organizations reduce costs while improving risk management, quality and revenue growth. We are seeking a Senior Azure Data Engineer to help design, build, and operate our next-generation enterprise data platform on Microsoft Azure. You will own end-to-end delivery of data pipelines and data products that power analytics, regulatory reporting, operational dashboards, and emerging AI/ML use cases. You will partner closely with data architects, analytics engineers, data scientists, business stakeholders, and platform engineering teams to deliver reliable, performance, secure, and cost-efficient data solutions. This role is ideal for an engineer with strong hands-on depth in Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse Analytics and/or Databricks, and modern Lakehouse patterns, who is comfortable leading migration programs (e.g., Informatica-to-ADF, on-prem warehouse-to-cloud), mentoring mid-level engineers, and shaping engineering standards across the team. 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.

Requirements

Deep hands-on expertise with Azure Data Factory: pipelines, datasets, linked services, triggers, parameterization, mapping data flows, and all three Integration Runtime types (Azure, Self-hosted, SSIS)
Demonstrated Experience in Data Bricks and PySpark
Production experience with one or more of: Azure Synapse Analytics (Dedicated and Serverless SQL Pools, Spark Pools) OR Azure Databricks (Delta Lake, Unity Catalog) OR Microsoft Fabric (Warehouse, Lakehouse, OneLake)
Demonstred working knowledge of Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 (hierarchical namespace, RBAC + ACLs, lifecycle management, security)
Experience with Azure Key Vault, Azure AD / Entra ID (including managed identities and service principals), and private networking (VNet integration, private endpoints)
Monitoring and troubleshooting with Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, and KQL
Advanced SQL - window functions, CTEs, query optimization, execution plan analysis, performance tuning
Demonstrated Python for data engineering - pandas, PySpark, REST API integration, unit testing (pytest)
Proficient in T-SQL; familiarity with Spark SQL, KQL, PowerShell, and Bash shell scripting
Must be willing/able to travel approximately 10%25 of the time as business needs dictate (occasional travel to Springfield, IL two to three times per year)

Nice To Haves

5+ years of data warehouse development experience
5+ years of data modeling experience using ERWIN or similar tools
2+ years of experience with Azure Data Factory and Snowflake
Medicaid Domain Knowledge

Responsibilities

Design and build robust, reusable, parameter-driven ingestion and transformation pipelines using Azure Data Factory, Synapse Pipelines, Data Bricks and/or Microsoft Fabric Data Factory
Implement medallion architecture (Bronze / Silver / Gold) on Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 using Delta Lake, Parquet, and structured streaming patterns
Build performant ELT workflows that leverage pushdown to source systems (Synapse Dedicated SQL Pool, Azure SQL, Teradata) where appropriate
Develop and optimize PySpark notebooks and jobs on Azure Databricks or Synapse Spark
Design dimensional models (Kimball star/snowflake) and data vault patterns for analytics consumption
Implement Slowly Changing Dimensions (Type 1/2/3), Change Data Capture, and late-arriving data patterns
Tune distributed SQL workloads in Synapse Dedicated SQL Pool / Fabric Warehouse, including distribution keys, partitioning, and clustered column store indexes
Implement CI/CD for data pipelines using Azure DevOps (YAML pipelines, ARM/Bicep/Terraform) across Dev / SIT / UAT / Prod environments
Instrument pipelines with robust logging, auditing, and monitoring using Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, and KQL
Define and enforce coding standards, code review practices, branching strategies, and release management
Lead or contribute to legacy-to-cloud migrations - e.g., Informatica PowerCenter to Azure Data Factory, on-premises Teradata / Oracle / SQL Server to Synapse or Fabric
Perform workload assessment, capacity planning, and cost modeling for target-state architectures
Production incident response for critical pipelines