Senior AI or ML Engineer - Hybrid in Austin, TX, Chicago, IL, or Minneapolis, MN

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're excited to share an opportunity to join a cutting-edge project involving the development and enhancement of a voice-based bot platform built on top of an LLM (Large Language Model) framework. The scope of work includes collaborating on a highly scalable, consumer-facing system designed for production environments with significant traffic. Ideal candidates should be enthusiastic about emerging technologies in the LLM space, as this role offers hands‑on experience with advanced tools and the chance to explore innovative solutions within a rapidly evolving AI landscape.

If you are located in Austin, Chicago or Minneapolis, you will have the flexibility to work remotely*, as well as work in the office as you take on some tough challenges.

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.

• Help design and develop the next generation of NLP, ML & AI products, and services for healthcare
• Develop machine learning and deep learning models and systems in domains including, but not limited to: NLP, NLU, NLG, SLU and multidimensional time series forecasting among others
• Exposure in RAG, Lang Chain, VectorDBs
• Ability to Quantize, Optimize GenAI models
• Manage NLP & ML models lifecycle for a suite of products
• Run large complex proof-of-concepts for the healthcare business
• Manage prioritization and technology work for building NLP, ML & AI solutions
• Lead the full end‑to‑end machine learning development process including data ingestion and preparation, feature engineering, analysis and modeling, model deployment, performance tracking and documentation
• Establish best practices for end‑to‑end deep learning and machine learning development cycle to ensure rigor in process and quality in outcome
• Work with a great deal of autonomy to find solutions to complex problems

• 5+ years of experience in delivering AI/ML projects in a production environment, preferably consumer-facing and high‑traffic systems
• 5+ years of client‑side application development, with a solid track record of building scalable and performant user‑facing applications
• 5+ years of hands‑on coding experience in JavaScript or Python‑must be comfortable writing production‑quality code
• 3+ years of hands‑on development experience with Large Language Models (LLMs), including prompt engineering, fine‑tuning, or custom LLM orchestration
• 2+ years of experience working with agentic AI architectures, including task decomposition, memory management, and autonomous agent workflows

• Experience working with AWS Bedrock, including deploying and orchestrating foundation models within a managed environment
• Hands‑on experience integrating conversational AI platforms like Amazon Lex V2 with backend services or bots, especially for voice‑based or multi‑turn conversations
• Familiarity with AWS Lambda for building scalable, serverless microservices that integrate with LLM workflows or bot architectures
• Experience with Amazon Kendra, Amazon Sage Maker, or AWS Step Functions is a plus, especially in the context of LLM‑powered knowledge retrieval or orchestration
• Understanding of event‑driven architecture and serverless patterns using AWS SNS/SQS, API Gateway, and DynamoDB
• Experience deploying and monitoring LLM‑enabled bots in Amazon Connect or other customer engagement platforms
• Experience in deploying scalable solutions to complex problems, from defining the problem, implementing the solution, and launching the new product successfully
• Familiarity with CI/CD…