Director, Finance AI SME, Record-to-Report Transformation - Remote

United Health Group is a health care and well-being company that's dedicated to improving the health outcomes of millions around the world. We are comprised of two distinct and complementary businesses, United Healthcare and Optum, working to build a better health system for all. Here, your contributions matter as they will help transform health care for years to come. Make an impact with a team that shares your passion for helping others.

Join us to start Caring. Connecting. Growing together.

The Senior Director, Finance AI SME, Record-to-Report Transformation will serve as a senior controllership and accounting subject matter expert embedded within Finance AI transformation pods. This leader will partner with Finance, Controllership, Data, Technology, Risk and Controls, Internal Audit, and business stakeholders to blueprint current-state and future-state record-to-report processes and help develop proof-of-concept AI systems that can be validated, governed, and scaled.

This role is designed for a senior accounting and controllership leader with a solid public accounting foundation and deep experience across the financial close, journal entries, reconciliations, consolidations, intercompany, external reporting, statutory reporting, technical accounting, SOX/ICFR, and audit readiness. The person will bring the judgment required to determine where AI can safely automate or augment record-to-report work, where human review remains non-negotiable, and how future-state processes should be designed to improve speed, quality, traceability, and control.

The Senior Director will operate in a cross-functional pod model, working side by side with data engineers, solution architects, forward deployed engineers, AI/ML resources, risk and controls partners, accounting leaders, and business finance teams. This is a hands-on transformation role. The individual will be expected to lead blueprinting sessions, define R2R process requirements, identify control dependencies, validate prototype outputs, challenge data and accounting logic, and help determine whether proof-of-concept systems are ready to be refined, scaled, or transitioned into the AI Factory for productization.

The ideal candidate combines audit discipline, enterprise controllership experience, process redesign capability, and practical curiosity about AI. They must be able to translate accounting and reporting requirements into agent-ready workflows that are accurate, auditable, explainable, and acceptable to Finance leadership, Internal Audit, external auditors, and regulators.

Role Purpose

The purpose of this role is to provide senior-level R2R expertise to Finance AI pods that are redesigning core accounting and reporting processes and developing proof-of-concept AI systems. The Senior Director will help move Finance from manual, calendar-driven, spreadsheet-heavy close processes toward a more continuous, exception-based, data-enabled, and AI-supported controllership model.

The role has three integrated mandates:

* Blueprint the current state. Understand and document how R2R activities operate today across journal entries, reconciliations, close management, intercompany, consolidation, reporting, technical accounting, statutory reporting, controls, data flows, and audit evidence

* Design the future state. Partner with Finance, Technology, Data, Risk, and business stakeholders to define how R2R should operate when people, AI agents, governed data, controls, and accounting judgment are designed together from the beginning

* Develop and validate AI proof-of-concept systems. Translate accounting requirements into clear prototype designs, help build and test R2R agents, validate outputs against accounting standards and source data, and determine whether solutions are ready for additional testing, productization, or scale

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:

R2R Finance SME Leadership in Pod Delivery

* Serve as a senior Finance SME within cross-functional Finance AI pods focused on record-to-report, controllership, close, consolidation, and reporting transformation

* Partner with pod leads, accounting leaders, business finance teams, data teams, technology teams, and risk partners to define the business problem, target outcomes, scope, requirements, and success criteria for R2R POCs

* Bring practical controllership judgment to AI design decisions, ensuring prototypes reflect how accounting work is actually performed, reviewed, approved, reconciled, reported, and audited

* Translate accounting and reporting requirements into buildable, testable, agent-ready workflows for data engineers, solution architects, and AI/ML teams

* Help ensure pod work remains focused on high-value R2R issues, including close-cycle compression, control effectiveness,…