Principal Software Engineer

Join Optum as a Principal Software Engineer in Gurugram, Haryana, and lead the charge in designing and delivering next-generation Agentic AI systems and Generative AI products. This role is pivotal in shaping the future of AI within Optum, directly impacting health outcomes by connecting people with the care, pharmacy benefits, data, and resources they need to live healthier lives.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Architect & Innovate: Define and evolve technical architecture for Agentic AI platforms, utilizing Python, LangChain/LangGraph, and frameworks such as ReACT, ReWOO, RAG, and A2A.
• Technical Leadership: Set the vision for prompt engineering, evaluation strategies, and reliability guardrails. Review designs and contribute to critical code paths as needed.
• Cloud-Native Solutions: Design scalable, secure, and resilient solutions on Azure (Function Apps, Cosmos DB, AKS) with enterprise-grade observability and compliance.
• Performance & Scalability: Drive optimization of multi-turn conversational agents, establishing benchmarks and performance KPIs.
• Engineering Excellence: Champion best practices including test coverage, coding standards, and CI/CD quality gates, fostering a culture of continuous improvement.
• Delivery & Operations: Oversee modern DevOps practices (Docker/Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, security scans) and ensure production readiness.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with product, platform, and backend teams to integrate APIs and microservices, defining SLAs and telemetry standards.
• Monitoring & Reliability: Implement observability for AI agent behavior (latency, hallucination rate, safety compliance), defining SLOs and operational playbooks.
• Knowledge Management: Maintain architecture decision records, design documentation, and operational guides in a shared knowledge base.
• Leadership & Mentorship: Build and mentor a high-performing engineering team, facilitating architecture reviews, roadmap planning, and release readiness.

We are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where every team member can thrive. Compliance with company policies and employment contract terms is expected.

Required Qualifications:

• Education: Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field; an advanced degree is preferred.
• Experience: 12+ years in software engineering, with significant experience in AI/ML systems or large-scale distributed platforms. Proven leadership in technical architecture and delivery is essential.
• AI/ML Expertise:
  • Solid hands-on proficiency in Python and AI agent frameworks like LangChain, LangGraph, ReACT, ReWOO, and RAG.
  • Deep understanding of LLM-driven architectures, prompt engineering, evaluation metrics, and reliability/safety guardrails.
• Cloud & Architecture:
  • Extensive experience with Azure cloud-native services (Function Apps, Cosmos DB, AKS) and microservices architecture.
  • Familiarity with event-driven, serverless, and scalable design patterns.
• DevOps & Security:
  • Proficiency in containerization (Docker/Kubernetes) and CI/CD pipelines with security and compliance gates.
  • Knowledge of observability frameworks, telemetry, and operational resilience.
• Performance & Optimization:
  • Expertise in profiling, benchmarking, and optimizing for latency, throughput, and cost efficiency.
• Quality Engineering:
  • Solid testing discipline (pytest), coverage targets, static analysis, and continuous quality gates.
• Leadership & Collaboration:
  • Demonstrated ability to lead technical decisions, mentor engineers, and drive engineering excellence.
  • Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to align architecture with business goals.
• Strategic Thinking:
  • Ability to balance hands-on technical depth with strategic leadership, roadmap planning, and cross-functional alignment.

At UnitedHealth Group, our mission is to help people live healthier lives and make the health system work better for everyone. We are dedicated to enabling equitable care and addressing health disparities.