Principal Data Scientist

As a Principal Data Scientist at UnitedHealth Group, based in Eden Prairie, MN with remote work flexibility across the United States, you will lead the design and delivery of advanced AI, ML, and Generative AI systems within Optum AI. The role offers a salary range of USD 112,700 to 193,200 per year and requires a four days per week in-office commitment for hires located in Minneapolis or Washington DC.

Responsibilities

• Guide the design and deployment of cutting edge AI and ML systems employing deep learning, representation learning, time-series modeling, survival analysis, and probabilistic modeling to tackle complex healthcare challenges
• Develop Generative AI and LLM driven solutions, including retrieval augmented generation pipelines, domain adapted LLMs, and AI copilots to optimize enterprise workflows
• Architect scalable AI and ML architectures, covering feature engineering pipelines, feature stores, model training workflows, serving infrastructure, monitoring capabilities, and automated retraining pipelines
• Develop agentic AI and autonomous workflows using agent frameworks, agentic skills, Model Context Protocol MCP integrations, and agent-to-agent communication patterns
• Advance model evaluation, reliability, and monitoring strategies including offline metrics, LLM benchmarking, safety testing, measures to mitigate hallucinations, and drift detection
• Promote responsible AI practices with a focus on explainability, interpretability, bias detection, fairness assessments, and governance aligned to corporate and regulatory standards
• Serve as a senior technical authority in AI and ML, mentoring data scientists and reviewing advanced modeling approaches and architectures
• Collaborate with engineering, platform, and product teams to operationalize scalable AI, ML, and GenAI solutions within enterprise platforms

Requirements

• More than 10 years of experience in machine learning, artificial intelligence, or applied data science, with at least 7 years designing and deploying production ML systems
• At least 8 years of Python based ML development using frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or equivalent, complemented by strong SQL skills
• Minimum 5 years deploying production ML systems including model serving, monitoring, lifecycle management, and collaboration with engineering teams
• At least 3 years building Generative AI or LLM driven applications, including prompt engineering, RAG pipelines, LLM evaluation, and safety guardrails
• At least 1 year building or evaluating agentic AI systems including AI agents, agentic skills, Model Context Protocol MCP, agent-to-agent interactions, or autonomous workflows

Technologies

• Python
• PyTorch
• TensorFlow
• Spark
• Databricks
• Ray
• Kubernetes
• AWS
• Azure
• GCP

Benefits

• Comprehensive benefits package
• Incentive and recognition programs
• Equity stock purchase
• 401k contribution