Lead Software Engineer, AI Platforms - Remote
About The Position
Optum Tech is seeking a Lead Software Engineer, AI Platforms to join the UHC E&I Software Development team within Optum Tech UHC Technology. This technical leadership role drives the design, architecture, and delivery of next-generation AI platforms and solutions, advancing enterprise capabilities in agentic systems, large language models (LLMs), and generative AI. The engineer will help define how AI is integrated into company systems, shape long-term strategy, and deliver high-impact production solutions. The role focuses on designing scalable platforms, enabling reusable capabilities, and accelerating AI adoption across products and teams. It covers the full lifecycle of AI solutions—from ideation and prototyping through architecture, development, deployment, and continuous optimization—and includes defining reference architectures, engineering standards, and responsible AI practices. The Lead Software Engineer partners with product, architecture, and business stakeholders and provides hands-on technical leadership, mentorship, and guidance to engineers. The position is remote within the United States. Employees hired in the Minneapolis or Washington, D.C. area must work in the office at least four days per week.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree or at least 8 years of equivalent software engineering experience.
- At least 8 years of software engineering experience, with deep expertise in full-stack development, distributed systems, and scalable architecture design.
- At least 2 years of experience with TypeScript and Python for AI agents and orchestration.
- At least 2 years of experience delivering LLM-based or generative AI solutions in production environments.
- At least 2 years of experience building cloud-native solutions using Azure, AWS, or GCP.
- At least 1 year of hands-on experience with agentic architectures and orchestration frameworks such as LangGraph or LangChain.
- At least 1 year of experience with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), embeddings, vector databases, and semantic search.
- At least 1 year of experience using modern AI-assisted development tools such as Codex, Claude, or Copilot.
- At least 1 year of experience designing and implementing agent-to-agent (A2A) communication patterns, multi-agent architectures, or orchestration frameworks in production environments.
Nice To Haves
- Proven ability to lead complex system design and architecture initiatives at scale.
- Experience defining enterprise-level platform strategies, reusable frameworks, and technical standards.
- Deep understanding of microservices, API design, event-driven architecture, and system reliability principles.
- Strong leadership and communication skills, including the ability to influence cross-functional teams and senior stakeholders.
- Experience mentoring engineers and raising engineering and architectural standards across teams.
- Ability to work effectively in ambiguous, fast-paced environments while balancing strategic thinking with hands-on execution.
- Experience establishing enterprise reference architectures and driving adoption across multiple engineering organizations.
- Experience building reusable AI platform capabilities, including orchestration, memory, agent lifecycle management, observability, governance, and security.
- Experience driving engineering transformation through AI-assisted software development, platform modernization, and architectural simplification initiatives.
Responsibilities
- Use enterprise-approved AI tools to streamline workflows, automate tasks, and drive continuous improvement.
- Evaluate emerging trends and tools to inform solution design, evolve AI capabilities, and drive strategic innovation.
- Lead the technical strategy, architecture, and execution of enterprise AI initiatives, focusing on agentic systems and generative AI.
- Design and implement scalable, secure, production-grade AI platforms, including LLM-based applications, orchestration frameworks, and multi-agent systems.
- Drive the end-to-end lifecycle of AI solutions, from ideation and prototyping through architecture, development, deployment, and continuous optimization.
- Define and establish reference architectures, engineering standards, and best practices for AI platforms.
- Provide hands-on subject-matter leadership in AI engineering across technologies such as LangChain, LangGraph, vector databases, and orchestration frameworks.
- Partner with product, architecture, and business stakeholders to translate strategic objectives into AI-enabled solutions that deliver measurable value.
- Lead and influence system design and architectural decisions for distributed, cloud-native, and microservices-based AI applications.
- Establish and enforce AI governance and responsible AI practices, including model monitoring, observability, reliability, and risk mitigation.
- Mentor and develop engineers, fostering technical excellence, innovation, and modern software practices.
- Build and promote reusable services, shared frameworks, and platform capabilities to scale AI adoption across teams.
Benefits
- Comprehensive benefits package
- Incentive and recognition programs
- Equity stock purchase
- 401(k) contribution
- Development opportunities for other roles
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
