Sr. Manager, AI/ML Engineering

UnitedHealth Group•Eden Prairie, MN

15h•$148,900 - $255,300•Remote

About The Position

The Sr. Manager, AI/ML Engineering leads the team responsible for making enterprise data usable across AI platforms within Optum Technology’s Integrated AI & Automation / AI Engineering team. The role owns the end-to-end integration service lifecycle, from intake and build through enablement, administration, troubleshooting, and operations, covering Microsoft Copilot, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google integrations. Scope includes plugins, connectors, Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, and approved skills artifacts. This position combines people leadership with technical quality, repeatable onboarding, and reliable service. The manager partners with product and business leaders to align priorities and capacity, and works with Architecture, Security, Legal, Privacy, identity teams, and source owners to deliver approved, supportable integrations. Project managers coordinate delivery execution, and developers own hands-on implementation; the manager ensures review evidence and readiness criteria are met while respecting the authority of control and approval functions. The role may be performed remotely from anywhere in the United States. Employees hired in the Minneapolis or Washington, D.C. area must work in the office at least four days per week. Remote employees must follow UnitedHealth Group’s Telecommuter Policy.

Requirements

At least 5 years of experience leading an engineering team, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and capacity planning for a portfolio of integration work.
At least 5 years of experience delivering enterprise AI integrations, connectors, plugins, or API-based services, with the ability to evaluate designs and establish reusable engineering standards.
Working knowledge of Python or Java sufficient to assess implementation quality, guide technical trade-offs, and coach developers.
Platform-administration and diagnostic expertise sufficient to lead a multi-platform integration service, including hands-on configuration; OAuth authorization and token endpoints; callback URLs; service principals; API permissions; access mapping across Microsoft and source-managed or custom identity providers; and network, internet, gateway, and firewall dependencies.
Ability to explain system use, troubleshoot issues, and plan rollbacks, with experience applying testing, monitoring, incident response, and controlled release practices.
Proven ability to align business and technical stakeholders, explain risks and priorities clearly, and work effectively within security, legal, privacy, and AI-governance approval processes.

Nice To Haves

Bachelor’s degree in computer science, software engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
Experience with AI connectors and MCP servers, and familiarity with integration capabilities across OpenAI, Anthropic, or Microsoft AI platforms.
Experience with Entra app registrations, delegated OAuth, gateways, connector manifests, and administrator registration workflows.
Experience building repeatable onboarding and operational-readiness practices in a regulated enterprise environment.
Experience partnering with platform vendors and leading improvements informed by production incidents, user feedback, and adoption evidence.

Responsibilities

Recruit, coach, and develop a team of connector engineers, platform administrators, and troubleshooters, including employees and contractors as appropriate; set expectations, provide feedback, and foster collaborative ownership and sound engineering judgment.
Translate business demand into a realistic engineering portfolio with product and business leaders, incorporating CIO priority input and balancing new delivery, maintenance, risk reduction, and team capacity.
Establish auditable intake and scoping with sponsors and source owners, documenting access, feasibility, acceptance criteria, review evidence, and required approval or catalog identifiers, including AID where applicable.
Coordinate catalog, hosting, IAM, and network dependencies with AI Catalog, cloud/platform, identity, and network owners, and help define evolving custom-agent and MCP processes while respecting those owners’ control authority.
Own technical quality through design and custom-code review, reusable patterns, testing, and documentation; validate platform-specific packages and distinguish approved artifacts from unauthorized uploads using approval and catalog provenance.
Ensure teams use approved development, test, and production environments and least-privilege controls to prevent direct production creation or deployment that bypasses review.
Ensure Architecture, Security, Legal, and Privacy reviews have complete evidence; coordinate AIRB and ESRO reviews as applicable and track required decisions before release.
Guide secure configuration with AI administrators, IAM teams, and source teams, including Entra app registrations, delegated OAuth, gateways, manifests, administrator registration, and approved API permissions.
Require sandbox and staging validation of authentication, retrieval, access mapping, synchronization, and performance, with traceable results and resolved issues before production progression.
Oversee connector operations and incident response, including monitoring, alerts, recovery, support-group ownership, access and onboarding processes, change controls, and audit evidence.
Ensure controlled pilots, Limited Availability, and General Availability have explicit readiness criteria, approved users, required controls, and completed launch decisions, including ESRO gating where applicable.
Build vendor and platform partnerships, manage technical dependencies and evolving capabilities, coordinate with source teams on service issues or platform changes, and escalate complex issues to qualified vendor technical experts as needed.
Use delivery, reliability, and adoption evidence to improve engineering practices; ensure training, communications, and user feedback inform releases while project managers maintain execution plans and coordination.