Principal Architect

UnitedHealth Group•Eden Prairie, MN

1d•$134,600 - $230,800

About The Position

Optum is seeking an experienced Principal Architect to provide architecture and technical leadership across its state government technology portfolio. The portfolio includes mission-critical solutions and IT services spanning enterprise data warehousing (EDW), data and analytics, healthcare access, program operations, digital applications and integrations, cloud and platform engineering, DevSecOps, reliability, and cybersecurity. The role establishes architectural coherence across Product Engineering, Tier 0/Platform Engineering, Security Operations, and DevOps/SRE. It ensures security, privacy, compliance, resiliency, interoperability, and operability are built into solutions from the start. The Principal Architect translates federal and state technology, security, privacy, and regulatory requirements into practical reference architectures, engineering standards, reusable patterns, automated guardrails, and platform capabilities that delivery teams can adopt across client programs. The role also advises engineering, delivery, and client stakeholders, leads architecture reviews and decision processes, and develops architecture roadmaps and reusable knowledge assets. The salary range is $134,600–$230,800 annually based on full-time employment. Benefits and incentives are subject to eligibility requirements. Candidates must pass a drug test before beginning employment.

Requirements

Bachelor's or graduate degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
10+ years of experience in enterprise architecture, solution architecture, platform engineering, security architecture, or technical consulting, including large-scale systems in state government, healthcare, or other regulated environments.
8+ years of experience with cloud platforms such as Azure, AWS, or GCP and solid expertise across application, integration, data, platform, security, DevSecOps, and reliability architecture.
Experience with NIST SP 800-53, NIST CSF, NIST SP 800-207, NIST RMF, HIPAA/HITECH, CMS security requirements, IRS Publication 1075, FIPS, and/or state cybersecurity and privacy standards.
Experience with ATO, control inheritance, and compliance evidence automation.

Nice To Haves

Experience with state Medicaid, health and human services, healthcare access, integrated eligibility, claims, provider, program operations, EDW, or analytics platforms, and frameworks such as MITA and CMS guidance.
Experience building internal developer platforms, reusable cloud capabilities, golden paths, policy-as-code, automated security/compliance guardrails, legacy modernization, or AI-enabled architectures.

Responsibilities

Define and evolve target architectures across applications, platforms, cloud, data, analytics, integration, security, identity, observability, and reliability for state government solutions.
Establish architecture principles, reference architectures, technology standards, reusable patterns, and engineering guardrails across programs while accommodating state-specific and contractual requirements.
Provide architecture leadership for solutions spanning EDW and data platforms, analytics, healthcare access, program operations, digital applications, integration services, cloud platforms, and cybersecurity.
Translate business, client, contractual, regulatory, security, privacy, and operational requirements into feasible technical architectures; identify risks, dependencies, trade-offs, and reuse opportunities.
Establish data architecture patterns for EDW, data lakes/lakehouses, analytics, reporting, operational data stores, and batch, streaming, API-based, and event-driven integration, including classification, lineage, retention, masking, encryption, and access control.
Guide application and integration architecture for modern web applications, APIs, microservices, workflow solutions, distributed systems, and interoperability with state and federal systems and external partners.
Partner with Tier 0/Platform Engineering to turn architectural standards into reusable platform capabilities and secure golden paths for cloud foundations, networking, identity, containers/Kubernetes, Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD, secrets, API management, logging, monitoring, backup, and disaster recovery.
Embed security and privacy by design and translate applicable client and regulatory requirements into technical controls and reference architectures in partnership with Security Operations and delivery teams.
Apply applicable standards based on client, contract, data type, and system scope, including NIST CSF, NIST SP 800-53, NIST RMF guidance, NIST SP 800-207 Zero Trust, FIPS, HIPAA/HITECH, applicable CMS security and privacy requirements including ARS, IRS Publication 1075 for FTI, state cybersecurity and privacy standards, client policies, and applicable CIS benchmarks.
Establish secure patterns for identity, authentication, authorization, least privilege, privileged access, encryption, key management, secrets, segmentation, application security, API security, data protection, and continuous monitoring.
Translate security and regulatory controls into architecture and engineering requirements, identify inheritable controls, support control traceability and evidence generation, and promote reusable security capabilities across client programs.
Partner with DevOps/SRE and Product Engineering to establish consistent practices for CI/CD, DevSecOps, software-supply-chain security, Infrastructure as Code, observability, SLIs/SLOs, resiliency, capacity, performance, disaster recovery, and production readiness.
Lead lightweight architecture reviews, Architecture Decision Records (ADRs), and an architecture-exception process with documented rationale, risk, ownership, and review dates.
Identify architectural fragmentation, duplicated capabilities, and systemic technical debt; develop remediation strategies and a 12–18 month architecture roadmap aligned to client needs, product strategy, platform investments, security requirements, and technology evolution.
Build reusable architecture templates, accelerators, patterns, and knowledge assets that improve consistency and delivery speed across programs.
Act as a senior technical advisor to engineering, delivery, and client stakeholders and influence across organizational boundaries through technical credibility, clear decisions, and practical engineering outcomes.