Principal AI Architect - Remote

Optum is seeking a visionary Digital AI architect for our Contract Center Transformation. The successful candidate will play a critical role in transforming our voice and digital experiences into conversational experiences across multiple engagement channels (including web, app, chat, voice, and search). Your work will help UnitedHealth Group’s consumer‑obsessed digital vision come to life by using AI to deliver next‑generation Conversational Experiences, with a particular emphasis on transforming how consumers engage in the U.S. health care system.

You'll enjoy the flexibility to work remotely from anywhere within the U.S. For all hires in the Minneapolis or Washington, D.C. area, you will be required to work in the office a minimum of four days per week.

Primary Responsibilities

• Own the end‑to‑end technical architecture for conversational chat and messaging systems across web, mobile, and other digital channels
• Design and implement channel‑agnostic chat architectures that separate channel delivery from conversation intelligence, orchestration, and backend integrations
• Define and implement multi‑bot / multi‑agent orchestration patterns, including routing between deterministic flows, AI agents, domain bots, and human agents
• Design robust approaches for conversation state, memory, context propagation, and session continuity across channels, devices, and long‑running customer journeys
• Define and implement guardrails for chat systems, including policy enforcement, tool restrictions, grounding/validation patterns, escalation rules, and safe fallback behavior
• Establish telemetry, observability, and evaluation patterns for conversational systems, including latency, fallback rates, drop‑off points, repeated questions, low‑confidence signals, transcript analysis, and quality feedback loops
• Design secure integration patterns between chat systems and enterprise services such as identity, CRM, case management, customer profile, knowledge, and backend APIs
• Define patterns for bot‑to‑agent handoff, agent context transfer, async messaging behavior, and unified customer journey continuity
• Lead architecture reviews, publish reusable patterns and standards, mentor engineers, and influence cross‑functional stakeholders across Product, Engineering, Security, and Operations
• Evaluate emerging conversational AI capabilities, frameworks, and integration patterns to improve maintainability, quality, scalability, and customer outcomes

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience
• 5+ years of experience in solution architecture and/or software engineering for customer‑facing chat, messaging, conversational AI, or digital customer experience platforms
• 3+ years of hands‑on experience designing and implementing conversational chat systems in production, including orchestration, session handling, routing, and human handoff
• 3+ years of experience building or integrating customer chat experiences into web/mobile applications using APIs/SDKs, secure authentication, and session/context management patterns
• 3+ years of experience implementing conversational AI for chat, including multi‑turn conversation handling, fulfillment, escalation, and fallback design
• 3+ years of experience with one or more of the following: memory/context management, multi‑agent or multi‑bot orchestration, grounding/guardrails, evaluation frameworks, or telemetry/quality feedback loops for conversational systems
• Solid experience with modern integration patterns including REST, event‑driven systems, async messaging, data contracts, and error‑handling patterns
• Experience with AI in engineering workflows, including standards, guardrails, reusable prompts/patterns, and evaluation/quality checks
• Demonstrated ability to produce architecture artifacts, lead technical workshops, mentor engineers, and communicate clearly with technical and non‑technical stakeholders
• Demonstrated operational mindset, including monitoring/alerting, incident support, root cause analysis, and change safety for customer‑facing conversational platforms

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience designing channel‑agnostic conversational systems that support consistent behavior across chat, messaging, voice, and human‑assisted experiences
• Experience with LLM‑based orchestration, RAG/grounding strategies, tool‑calling patterns, or policy‑enforced agent architectures
• Experience with asynchronous messaging patterns, resume/rejoin behavior, and long‑running session continuity
• Experience with Infrastructure‑as‑Code and CI/CD for conversational platform delivery
• Experience partnering with UX/content/conversation design teams to improve usability, tone, containment, and resolution outcomes
• Experience operating in regulated or high‑compliance environments with solid privacy, retention, and audit requirements
• All employees working remotely will be required to adhere to UnitedHealth Group’s Telecommuter Policy

Benefits

Pay is based on several factors including but not limited to local labor markets, education, work experience, certifications, etc. The salary for this role will range from $134,600 to $230,800 annually based on full‑time employment. In addition to your salary, we offer benefits such as a comprehensive benefits package, incentive and recognition programs, equity stock purchase and 401(k) contribution (all benefits are subject to eligibility requirements).

We comply with all minimum wage laws as applicable.

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.

UnitedHealth Group is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer under applicable law and qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, national origin, religion, age, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by local, state, or federal laws, rules, or regulations.

UnitedHealth Group is a drug‑free workplace. Candidates are required to pass a drug test before beginning employment.