Dir I&O Engineering - Remote

Requisition Number: 2362244
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.
Positions in this function design, engineer, and manage the organization's infrastructure and operational platforms. From a cloud services model, this includes services commonly thought of as IaaS and PaaS and their underlying foundational components. Additionally, this function also has responsibility for traditional enterprise infrastructure and operational platforms such as email, file transfer, and collaboration technologies, among others. This role must understand functional and non-functional requirements to ensure they can be achieved through system design and engineering to meet the needs of the customers. This function works closely with business and technology stakeholders to develop roadmaps for their respective technology portfolios, resolve cross-system and domain dependencies, ensure effective integration among the services offered to the end customer, and efficient usage of infrastructure and operational platforms. Monitor technological advancements and industry trends to influence company standards and ensure that solutions are continuously improved and maintained through product management practices, including recommendations to invest in a solution or retirement of redundant or out-of-date systems.
UnitedHealthcare Commercial Technology (UHCT) - Employer & Individual (E&I) requires an infrastructure and operations engineering leader who can set the strategy and operating model for Infrastructure & Operations (I&O) Engineering to measurably improve availability, resilience, infrastructure management, and operational effectiveness across E&I products, platforms, and critical business journeys (e.g., enrollment, billing, eligibility, broker/producer experiences, and member and employer servicing).
This role designs, engineers, and manages infrastructure and operational platforms-including IaaS, PaaS, and foundational components-establishes reliability and performance standards (SLIs/SLOs/SLAs), drives infrastructure automation and toil reduction, strengthens incident and problem management, and partners with Product and Engineering to embed infrastructure resilience and operability "by design" from architecture through delivery. Success requires disciplined governance, strong executive communication, and the ability to align cross-functional stakeholders to a prioritized roadmap tied to member/employer experience, operational risk reduction, and regulatory/compliance expectations.
You'll enjoy the flexibility to work remotely * from anywhere within the U.S. 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.
Primary Responsibilities:

• Leadership and Strategy
  • Develop and execute a comprehensive strategy for I&O Engineering aligned with organizational goals, with a focus on improving stability, resilience, infrastructure performance, and supportability across UHCT Employer & Individual (E&I) products, platforms, and critical business journeys
  • Build, lead, and mentor a high-performing team of I&O Engineering professionals, fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement
  • Collaborate with cross-functional leaders and engineering teams to integrate infrastructure best practices into all aspects of E&I products and platforms, "baking in" resilience from design to deployment
  • Guide teams on priorities, mentor individual contributors, and report to CIOs on critical paths, mitigation plans, and strategic initiatives
  • Work closely with business and technology stakeholders to develop roadmaps for infrastructure technology portfolios, resolve cross-system and domain dependencies, and ensure effective integration among services offered to the end customer
• Infrastructure & Operations Engineering
  • Design, engineer, and manage infrastructure and operational platforms supporting E&I products and services, including cloud (IaaS/PaaS), on-premises, and hybrid environments
  • Oversee infrastructure provisioning, configuration management, and capacity planning to ensure scalable, reliable, and cost-effective service delivery
  • Analyze and model infrastructure dependencies (applications, APIs, networking, storage, compute) and proactively identify risks including natural disasters, cyberattacks, and hardware/software failures
  • Define and enforce infrastructure standards, reference architectures, and engineering best practices across the E&I portfolio
  • Lead infrastructure automation initiatives using Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC), CI/CD pipelines, and self-service provisioning to reduce manual toil and accelerate delivery
  • Establish and maintain monitoring, alerting, and observability frameworks to ensure proactive detection and rapid resolution of infrastructure issues
  • Drive cloud migration and modernization strategies, ensuring workloads are optimally placed across cloud-native, containerized, and traditional platforms
  • Monitor technological advancements and industry trends to influence company standards and ensure solutions are continuously improved through product management practices, including recommendations to invest in a solution or retirement of redundant or out-of-date systems
• Technology Operations
  • Lead and continuously improve incident, problem, and change management processes across E&I infrastructure and platforms
  • Establish and enforce SLIs, SLOs, and SLAs across all infrastructure services, with clear escalation paths and accountability models
  • Drive automation of operational runbooks, alerting, and remediation workflows to reduce MTTR and increase system availability
  • Coordinate with application teams and vendors to ensure infrastructure readiness for peak season, major releases, and business-critical events
  • Maintain operational dashboards providing real-time visibility into infrastructure health, performance, and capacity utilization

You'll be rewarded and recognized for your performance in an environment that will challenge you and give you clear direction on what it takes to succeed in your role as well as provide development for other roles you may be interested in.
Required Qualifications:

• 10+ years of experience in infrastructure engineering, operations, or platform engineering roles with increasing scope and responsibility
• 5+ years of leadership experience managing infrastructure or I&O engineering teams
• Solid experience with Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, Ansible, Chef, Puppet), CI/CD pipelines, and automation frameworks
• Proven experience in incident, problem, and change management (ITIL/ITSM frameworks)
• Experience managing vendor relationships and driving accountability for infrastructure services
• Proven expertise in cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, or GCP), including IaaS, PaaS, networking, and security services
• Demonstrated ability to define and govern SLIs, SLOs, and SLAs for infrastructure services
• Proven solid executive communication skills with the ability to translate technical infrastructure concepts into business impact

Preferred Qualifications:

• Certifications such as AWS Solutions Architect, Azure Solutions Architect, ITIL, or equivalent
• Experience in healthcare technology or regulated industries
• Experience with AIOps, predictive analytics, or machine learning for infrastructure optimization
• Knowledge of containerization (Kubernetes, Docker) and cloud-native architectures
• Familiarity with observability platforms (Splunk, Dynatrace, Datadog, Grafana)

*All employees working remotely will be required to adhere to UnitedHealth Group's Telecommuter Policy
Pay is based on several factors including but not limited to local labor markets, education, work experience, certifications, etc. In addition to your salary, we offer benefits such as, a comprehensive benefits package, incentive and recognition programs, equity stock purchase and 401k contribution (all benefits are subject to eligibility requirements). No matter where or when you begin a career with us, you'll find a far-reaching choice of benefits and incentives. The salary for this role will range from $134,600 to $230,800 annually based on full-time employment. We comply with all minimum wage laws as applicable.
Application Deadline: This will be posted for a minimum of 2 business days or until a sufficient candidate pool has been collected. Job posting may come down early due to volume of applicants.
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.