Principal Data Engineer

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 diversity and inclusion, talented peers, comprehensive benefits and career development opportunities. Come make an impact on the communities we serve as you help us advance health equity on a global scale. Join us to start Caring. Connecting. Growing together.

About the Role:

Do you want to impact decisions to help people live healthier lives? Are you an innovative Data Engineer who thrives on developing new solutions to solve tough challenges?

We want to achieve more in our mission of health care, and so we have to be really smart about the business of health care. At Optum, we're changing the landscape of our industry. You will put your Data Engineering skills to work as you empower business partners and team members improve healthcare delivery. You will research cutting edge big data tools, and design innovative solutions to solve business problems that only a Data Engineer can.

You will be part of newly formed team in our Dublin office that is focused on developing a new, cutting-edge big-data analytic platform and that will support data pipelines that will enable new commercial products. You will be responsible for the integration of multiple complex data sources into our data platform with a mix of different cloud technologies (i.e. Kubernetes, Databricks, Snowflake). You will be an important member of a team focused on innovation; developing proofs of concepts that leverage data in new and exciting ways.
You'll be in the driver's seat on vital projects that have strategic importance to our mission of helping people live healthier lives. Yes, we share a mission that inspires. And we need your organizational talents and business discipline to help fuel that mission.

Careers with Optum offer flexible work arrangements and individuals who live and work in the Republic of Ireland will have the opportunity to split their monthly work hours between our Dublin office and telecommuting from a home-based office in a hybrid work model.

As a Principal Data Engineer, your responsibilities will include:

• Design and build data pipelines to process terabytes of data
• Orchestrate in Airflow the data tasks to run on Kubernetes/Hadoop for the ingestion, processing and cleaning of data.
• Create Docker images for various applications and deploy them on Kubernetes
• Design and build best in class processes to clean and standardize data.
• Troubleshoot production issues in our Elastic Environment
• Tuning and optimizing data processes
• Advancing the team’s DataOps culture (CI/CD, Orchestration, Testing, Monitoring) and building out standard development patterns
• Drive innovation by testing new technology and approaches to continually advance the capability of the data engineering function.
• Drive efficiencies in current engineering processes via standardization and migration of existing on-premise processes to the cloud
• Ensuring Data Quality – building best in class data quality monitoring that ensure that all data products exceed customer expectations.
• Mentor and train junior members of the team

Required Qualifications:

• Computer Science bachelor’s degree or similar.
• Good understanding of Data Modelling techniques i.e. DataVault, Kimble Star
• Excellent understanding of Column-Store RDBMS (DataBricks, Snowflake, Redshift, Vertica, Clickhouse)
• Good experience handling real-time, near real-time and batch data ingestions
• Hands on experience on the following technologies:
o Developing processes in Spark
o Writing complex SQL queries f
o Building ETL/data pipelines
o Exposure to Kubernetes and Linux containers (i.e. Docker)
o Related/complementary open source software platforms and languages (e.g. Scala, Python, Java, Linux)
• Proven track record of designing effective data strategies and leveraging modern data architectures that resulted in business value
• Experience building cloud-native data pipelines on either AWS, Azure or GCP, following best practices in cloud deployments
• Strong DataOps experience (CI/CD, Orchestration, Testing, Monitoring)
• Strong experience leading and developing data engineering teams
• Demonstrated effective interpersonal, influence, collaboration and listening skills
• Strong stakeholder management skills
• Excellent time management, organizational and prioritization skills with ability to balance multiple priorities.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with data tokenization and different techniques and tools i.e. DataVant, Protegrity
• Experience with Azure Data Factory, Databricks and Snowflake
• Experience with Apache Spark and related Big Data stack and technologies, PySpark Scala
• Experience working with Apache Kafka, building appropriate producer/consumer apps
• Experience working with Kubernetes and Docker, and knowledgeable about cloud infrastructure automation and management (e.g., Terraform)
• Experience working in projects with agile/scrum methodologies
• Familiarity with production quality ML and/or AI model development and deployment.
• Healthcare industry knowledge and experience with exposure to EDI, HIPAA, HL7 and FHIR integration standards

All telecommuters will be required to adhere to the UnitedHealth Group’s Telecommuter Policy.

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 marginalised 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.
Diversity creates a healthier atmosphere: Optum is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to gender, civil status, family status, sexual orientation, disability, religion, age, race, and membership of the Traveller community, or any other characteristic protected by law. Optum is a drug-free workplace. 2023 Optum Services (Ireland) Limited. All rights reserved.