Optum Data Science Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

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.
The Natural Language Processing (NLP) Engineer is a key technical contributor in the design and development of state-of-the-art NLP and Artificial Intelligence (AI) for medical applications. The Sr NLP Engineer works closely with other NLP engineers, NLP developers, software engineers, and subject matter experts on current company technologies and forward-looking projects.
The successful candidate will have a strong background in NLP and AI, with an emphasis on text, information retrieval, information extraction, and/or associated principles of knowledge representation and ontological design. The successful candidate will be comfortable contributing to research and design in addition to supporting team members in the ongoing maintenance of existing systems. Strong technical skills are required, as the successful candidate must be able to deliver solutions for use in a production environment.
You will enjoy the flexibility to telecommute* from anywhere within the U.S. as you take on some tough challenges.
Primary responsibilities include the enhancement of existing company NLP technologies and extension of those systems to new applications. Emphasis is placed on the augmentation of various clinical knowledge resources (lexicons, nomenclatures, hierarchies, ontologies, and rule systems) underlying the core NLP and AI modules. Emphasis is also placed on evaluation of the performance of those components on clinical documentation at scale in production environments. Work includes the generation and interpretation of domain/solution analytics, and, in collaboration with engineering, enhancement of the underlying NLP modules and functionality. Primary responsibilities also include direct support of team members in the maintenance of company NLP systems for production environments and resolution of internal and external customer issues. Work will involve all aspects of software design and development from system requirements definition to implementation, integration and testing.
You'll be rewarded and recognized for your performance in an environment that will challenge you and give you clear directions on what it takes to succeed in your role as well as provide development for other roles you may be interested in.
Required Qualifications:

• 4+ years of related professional work experience - significant academic NLP development experience will be considered for strong applicants with advanced degree
• 4+ years of experience in linguistic processes
• 3+ years of experience in algorithms and techniques within a computational domain with emphasis on text processing
• 3+ years of experience with natural language processing or formal linguistics: morphology, syntax and semantics
• 3+ years of experience with at least 2 of the following: Python, Java, C#
• 3+ years of experience in SQL
• 3+ years of experience integrating Copilot with GitHub or similar AI-assisted development tools to improve productivity and code quality
• 3+ years of experience with modern software development and DevOps ecosystems, such as:
  • GitHub (version control, pull requests, code reviews)
  • CI/CD pipelines and automated build/deployment workflows
• 3+ years of experience working with integrated development environments and tools such as:
  • Eclipse, Visual Studio
  • Artifact repositories such as Artifactory/JFrog
• 3+ years of experience building, deploying, and maintaining containerized images in scalable production environments

Preferred Qualifications:

• Degree in Linguistics, Computer Science, or other Computational discipline
• Exposure to LLMs & prompting
• Experience with ontologies
• Experience in medical coding or medical terminology
• Graduate degree
• Experience with modern AI development tools and applied AI engineering workflows

*All Telecommuters 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 $72,800 to $130,000 annually based on full-time employment. We comply with all minimum wage laws as applicable.
Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
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.
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