Sr. Manager, AI​/ML Engineering

Optum Tech is a global leader in health care innovation. Our teams develop cutting-edge solutions that help people live healthier lives and help make the health system work better for everyone. From advanced data analytics and AI to cybersecurity, we use innovative approaches to solve some of health care's most complex challenges. Your contributions here have the potential to change lives.

Ready to build the next breakthrough? Join us in making healthcare work better for everyone through people-led, responsible AI while Caring. Connecting. Growing together.

Lead the dedicated team that makes enterprise data usable across AI platforms. Within Optum Technology's Integrated AI & Automation / AI Engineering team, you will own the end-to-end pipeline from intake through build and enablement, administration, troubleshooting and operations for Microsoft Copilot, OpenAI, Anthropic and Google integrations. Scope includes plugins, connectors, Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers and, where approved, skills artifacts.

The role combines people leadership with technical quality, repeatable onboarding and reliable service.

You will partner with product and business leaders to align capacity and priorities, and with Architecture, Security, Legal, Privacy, identity teams and source owners to deliver approved, supportable integrations. Your focus is building a solid team and a sustainable engineering service; project managers coordinate delivery execution, while developers own hands-on implementation. You ensure review evidence and readiness criteria are met without overriding the authority of control or approval functions.

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.

• Recruit, coach and develop a balanced team of connector engineers, platform administrators and troubleshooters across employees and contractors as appropriate; set clear expectations, provide actionable feedback and build collaborative ownership and sound engineering judgment
• Translate business demand into a realistic engineering portfolio with product and business leaders, incorporating CIO priority input and balancing new delivery, maintenance, risk reduction and team capacity
• Establish auditable intake and scoping with sponsors and source owners, capturing access, feasibility, acceptance criteria and retrievable review evidence rather than ad hoc pings or uploads. Record required approval/catalog identifiers, including AID where applicable. Coordinate catalog, hosting, IAM and network dependencies with AI Catalog, cloud/platform, identity and network owners, who retain their control authority. Help these owners define evolving custom-agent/MCP processes
• Own technical quality through design and custom-code review, reusable patterns, testing and documentation. Validate platform-specific packages, including manifests, contracts and skill/instruction files, and distinguish approved artifacts from unauthorized uploads through approval/catalog provenance.
• Use approved development, test and production environments and least-privilege controls to prevent direct production creation or deployment that bypasses review
• Ensure Architecture, Security, Legal and Privacy reviews have complete evidence; coordinate AIRB and ESRO reviews as applicable and track required decisions before release
• Guide secure configuration with AI administrators, identity and access management (IAM) teams and source teams, covering Entra app registrations, delegated OAuth, gateways, manifests, admin registration and approved API permissions
• Require sandbox and staging validation of authentication, retrieval, access mapping, synchronization and performance, with traceable results and resolved issues before production progression
• Be accountable for connector operations and incident response, including monitoring, alerts, recovery, support-group ownership, access and onboarding processes, change controls and audit evidence
• Ensure controlled pilots, Limited Availability and General Availability have explicit readiness criteria, approved users, required controls and completed launch decisions, including ESRO gating where applicable
• Build effective vendor and platform partnerships, manage technical dependencies and evolving capabilities, and coordinate with source teams when service issues or…