Sr Cloud Engineer - Remote

UnitedHealth Group•Minnetonka, MN

7d•Remote

About The Position

Optum Tech is a global leader in health care innovation, developing cutting-edge solutions in advanced data analytics, AI, and cybersecurity to improve health care. The Senior Cloud Engineer plays a critical role in ensuring the reliability, security, and operational excellence of public cloud environments supporting production workloads. This is a hands-on cloud operations position focused on incident response, automation, and Infrastructure as Code, partnering with application teams to continuously improve Azure based platforms.

Requirements

Undergraduate degree or equivalent practical experience
8+ years of hands‑on experience in cloud engineering, infrastructure, or platform operations
8+ years supporting mission‑critical production environments
3+ years developing Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) and automation (Python)
Solid production experience in Azure (preferred); AWS or GCP acceptable with demonstrated ability to ramp quickly into Azure
Proven deep understanding of cloud infrastructure, networking, identity, and security fundamentals
Experience working ServiceNow incidents and participating in war rooms for high‑severity production issues
Demonstrated automation skills using Python
Ability to participate in an on‑call rotation and perform off‑hours maintenance

Nice To Haves

Practical experience applying SRE principles (error budgets, reliability metrics, incident postmortems) in production environments
Advanced public cloud certification (e.g., Azure Solutions Architect Expert)
Experience with CI/CD pipelines and Git‑based workflows, including GitHub Actions
Experience with Splunk or similar observability tools, including alerts, dashboards, and reporting
Demonstrated familiarity with cloud cost optimization / FinOps practices
Experience using AI‑assisted development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot) to improve automation and Infrastructure as Code

Responsibilities

Operate and support public cloud environments running production workloads
Apply Well‑Architected Framework principles (security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimization, operational excellence) to drive continuous improvement
Support day‑to‑day operations, including on‑call rotation and scheduled maintenance
Coordinate and execute high‑quality planned changes without service impact
Lead incident response, participate in war rooms, perform root cause analysis, and drive corrective actions
Improve monitoring, alerting, and observability across cloud environments
Design, build, and maintain Infrastructure as Code using Terraform and GitHub Actions
Develop automation using Python (and PowerShell where appropriate) to reduce operational toil
Promote standardized, repeatable deployment patterns
Reduce configuration drift and ensure consistency across dev, test, and prod environments
Leverage Generative AI tools to improve development and operational efficiency
Embed security best practices into cloud designs (identity, networking, encryption, secrets management)
Enforce enterprise security, governance, and compliance requirements
Identify and remediate cloud vulnerabilities within defined SLAs
Partner with security teams to meet regulatory and compliance expectations
Identify and execute cloud cost optimization opportunities
Serve as a trusted technical advisor to application teams adopting public cloud
Mentor junior engineers and contribute to shared documentation and operational playbooks
Stay current on enterprise cloud platforms, tooling, and industry best practices
Demonstrate solid ownership, self‑initiative, and commitment to mastering public cloud operations
Leverage enterprise-approved AI tools to streamline workflows, automate tasks, and drive continuous improvement.