Senior Software Engineer I - JAVA, React, SpringBoot, MicroService, Gen AI

Optum is a global organization that delivers care, aided by technology to help millions of people live healthier lives. The work you do with our team will directly improve health outcomes by connecting people with the care, pharmacy benefits, data and resources they need to feel their best. Here, you will find a culture guided by inclusion, talented peers, comprehensive benefits and career development opportunities. Come make an impact on the communities we serve as you help us advance health optimization on a global scale. Join us to start Caring. Connecting. Growing together.

We are seeking a highly skilled and experienced Senior Software Engineer to join our engineering organization. This role requires a strong technical leader who can independently drive complex engineering initiatives, provide technical guidance, influence architecture decisions, mentor engineers, and deliver scalable enterprise-grade solutions.

The ideal candidate should possess strong full-stack engineering expertise, exceptional problem-solving abilities, proven ownership of large-scale applications, and the ability to collaborate effectively across engineering and business teams.

This position is expected to operate with a high degree of autonomy while driving engineering excellence, modernization efforts, platform scalability, and continuous improvement initiatives.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Technical Leadership
  • Lead technical design and solution discussions
  • Evaluate architectural trade-offs and recommend scalable solutions
  • Drive engineering standards, best practices, and code quality initiatives
  • Conduct architecture reviews, design reviews, and code reviews
  • Mentor and guide engineers across the team
• Delivery Ownership
  • Own complex initiatives from design through production deployment
  • Independently drive execution with minimal supervision
  • Manage technical risks and dependencies proactively
  • Ensure predictable and high-quality delivery across multiple workstreams
• Architecture & Solution Design
  • Design highly scalable, secure, and maintainable solutions
  • Contribute to technology strategy and technical roadmaps
  • Drive modernization efforts and technology upgrades
  • Identify opportunities for automation, optimization, and simplification
• Platform Engineering
  • Improve application reliability, scalability, and performance
  • Support high-availability platform architectures
  • Lead root-cause analysis of production issues
  • Drive operational excellence and technical debt reduction initiatives
• Stakeholder Management
  • Collaborate with Product Owners, Architects, Engineering Leaders, and Business Stakeholders
  • Translate business requirements into technical solutions
  • Provide technical recommendations and implementation strategies
  • Communicate technical concepts effectively to diverse audiences
• AI & Engineering Innovation
  • Drive adoption of AI-assisted engineering practices
  • Evaluate AI and GenAI solutions for productivity improvements
  • Identify opportunities for automation using AI technologies
  • Mentor engineers on responsible AI usage and engineering innovation
• Comply with the terms and conditions of the employment contract, company policies and procedures, and any and all directives (such as, but not limited to, transfer and/or re-assignment to different work locations, change in teams and/or work shifts, policies in regards to flexibility of work benefits and/or work environment, alternative work arrangements, and other decisions that may arise due to the changing business environment). The Company may adopt, vary or rescind these policies and directives in its absolute discretion and without any limitation (implied or otherwise) on its ability to do so

Required Qualifications:

• 8+ years of software engineering experience
• Experience delivering enterprise-scale applications
• Experience leading technical design discussions
• Experience mentoring engineers and driving technical excellence
• Experience leading modernization and transformation initiatives
• Solid understanding of cloud-native and distributed architectures
  • Required Technical Skills
    • Backend Engineering
      • Java (8/11/17+)
      • Spring Boot
      • Spring Security
      • Spring Data JPA
      • REST APIs
      • Microservices Architecture
      • Distributed Systems Design
      • Enterprise Integration Patterns
    • Database Technologies
      • MongoDB
      • MySQL
      • Database Design
      • Data Modeling
      • Query Optimization
      • Database Performance Tuning
    • Event Streaming & Messaging
      • Apache Kafka
      • RabbitMQ
      • Event-Driven Architecture
      • Producer / Consumer Patterns
      • Asynchronous Processing Frameworks
    • Frontend Engineering
      • ReactJS
      • JavaScript
      • TypeScript
      • Modern UI Design Principles
      • Component-Based Architecture
      • UI Performance Optimization
    • Cloud & DevOps
      • Docker
      • Kubernetes
      • CI/CD Pipelines
      • Cloud-Native Architecture
      • Monitoring & Observability
      • Infrastructure Automation
• Performance & Scalability
  • The candidate must possess solid expertise in:
    • Performance Engineering
    • Application Performance Tuning
    • JVM Performance Optimization
    • Scalability Architecture
    • High Availability Design
    • Throughput Optimization
    • Capacity Planning
    • Distributed System Performance
    • Database Scaling Strategies
    • Caching Patterns
    • Load Balancing Strategies
    • Resiliency Patterns
    • Performance Testing & Analysis
• AI & GenAI Skills:
  • Strong understanding of Generative AI and LLMs
  • GitHub Copilot
  • Microsoft Copilot
  • Prompt Engineering
  • AI-assisted Software Development
  • Responsible AI Practices
• Skills:
  • Java
  • Spring Boot
  • Microservices
  • REST APIs
  • ReactJS
  • TypeScript
  • MongoDB
  • MySQL
  • Kafka
  • RabbitMQ
  • Performance Engineering
  • Scalability Architecture
  • Git
  • Agile/Scrum
  • AI-Assisted Development Tools

Preferred Qualifications:

• Skills:
  • Docker
  • Kubernetes
  • Azure / AWS / GCP
  • Application Security
  • Observability Platforms
  • Distributed Systems Design
  • Azure OpenAI
  • GitHub Copilot
  • Microsoft Copilot

Key Expectations

The selected candidate will:

• Independently drive complex engineering initiatives
• Lead technical design and architecture discussions
• Mentor and develop engineering talent
• Demonstrate strong ownership and accountability
• Build highly scalable, secure, and resilient systems
• Drive performance optimization initiatives
• Influence engineering strategy and technology decisions
• Promote engineering best practices and operational excellence
• Drive adoption of AI-assisted engineering practices
• Deliver predictable, high-quality outcomes with minimal supervision

At UnitedHealth Group, our mission is to help people live healthier lives and make the health system work better for everyone. We believe everyone-of every race, gender, sexuality, age, location and income-deserves the opportunity to live their healthiest life. Today, however, there are still far too many barriers to good health which are disproportionately experienced by people of color, historically marginalized groups and those with lower incomes. We are committed to mitigating our impact on the environment and enabling and delivering equitable care that addresses health disparities and improves health outcomes - an enterprise priority reflected in our mission.