Vice President of Software Engineering for Utilization Management

UnitedHealth Group•Eden Prairie, MN

14d•$200,400 - $343,500•Remote

About The Position

Optum Tech is a global leader in health care innovation, developing cutting-edge solutions to improve health and the healthcare system. As the Vice President of Software Engineering for Utilization Management, you will lead the strategic technology vision, platform engineering execution, and AI workforce transformation across multiple initiatives. This role involves overseeing the technical migration of Behavioral Health Utilization Management (UM) and Home & Community UM onto the unified Optum Care Management (OCM) platform. You will drive enterprise artificial intelligence integration and intelligent automation to modernize utilization workflows, empower engineering teams with advanced AI capabilities, and streamline care delivery. The goal is to shape a high-performing engineering culture focused on technological innovation and ethical AI deployment, accelerating enterprise platform modernization and improving patient care outcomes.

Requirements

10+ years of progressive software engineering leadership experience, managing multi-disciplinary engineering organizations.
5+ years of technical leadership experience leading enterprise platform modernizations, cloud migrations, and large-scale system integrations.
5+ years of experience leading software engineering teams within healthcare, clinical systems, or utilization management domains.
Experience driving technology strategy, workforce transformation, or operational integration involving AI, machine learning, or intelligent automation capabilities.
Proven track record of managing enterprise software engineering budgets, executive business stakeholder relationships, and multi-team development programs.
Prior experience leading global technology teams (through other leaders) of 200+ people.
Demonstrated success building and delivering on a cohesive technology vision, strategy, and roadmaps that meet business objectives.
Track record of effective working relationships with cSuite leaders and key business partners to drive change agendas.
Demonstrated strategic thinking abilities and an enterprise-wide perspective.
Experience leading through influence in a large, matrixed, global environment.
History of executing with excellence: setting purposeful goals and achieving them through intelligent actions, which balance competing priorities without losing momentum behind execution.
Demonstrated leadership style which fosters accountability, transparent communication and innovation.
High level of emotional intelligence.
Proven outstanding collaboration, influencing, problem solving and negotiation skills.

Nice To Haves

Experience leading large-scale platform migrations.
Experience with Behavioral Health, Home & Community care, or enterprise care management frameworks (such as OCM).
Demonstrated success driving organizational workforce transformation and establishing governance frameworks for ethical AI deployment.
Working knowledge of healthcare interoperability standards (e.g., FHIR, HL7, EDI 278/275).
Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field.

Responsibilities

Lead the strategic software engineering vision, roadmap execution, and platform architecture for enterprise pre & post-acute Utilization Management (UM) solutions.
Spearhead the complex technical migration of Behavioral Health UM and Home & Community UM systems onto the unified Optum Care Management (OCM) platform.
Integrate enterprise AI tools, set clear AI adoption goals within team development plans, and align engineering hiring with emerging AI competencies to accelerate technical capabilities.
Lead AI workforce transformation across the software engineering organization, actively remove barriers to adoption and upskill engineering talent to leverage modern AI tools and automated workflows.
Champion the ethical use of AI by embedding transparency, fairness, governance, and accountability throughout the complete software development and AI lifecycle.
Strategically use AI and advanced automation to solve complex healthcare delivery challenges, optimize clinical decision workflows, and deliver tangible business value.
Champion technology innovation as a core driver of team success, proactively shaping how software platform capabilities and AI solutions are developed, deployed, and utilized.
Direct engineering leadership, establish robust architectural standards and DevOps practices, and oversee technology budgets and system performance across all development initiatives.