Principal Architect - Remote

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.

Optum is seeking a visionary Digital AI architect for our Contract Center Transformation. The successful candidate will play a critical role in transforming our voice and digital experiences to conversational experiences, through multiple engagement channels (including web, app, chat, voice, and search), with a particular emphasis on transforming how consumers engage in the US health care system. In this role you will help make United Health Group's consumer obsessed digital vision come to life by using AI to deliver our next generation Conversational Experiences.

Define and lead the strategic vision, architecture, and implementation of AI contact solutions across our consumer-facing digital experiences. Partner closely with business and product teams to identify and prioritize strategic opportunities for leveraging AI within web, mobile, chat messaging, voice messaging, and search channels. Oversee the development of scalable, secure, and innovative AI solutions designed to enhance consumer engagement and deliver personalized, intuitive self-service experiences that transform our current digital experiences into conversational experiences.

You'll enjoy the flexibility to work remotely
* from anywhere within the U.S. as you take on some tough challenges.

Primary Responsibilities:

* Own the end-to-end voice solution architecture for Amazon Connect, including IVR/contact flows, prompts (TTS/SSML), routing strategy, queues, routing profiles, hours of operation, and contact attributes

* Design and deliver integrations between Amazon Connect and enterprise systems (CRM/case management, customer data, identity)

* Build and optimize self-service voice experiences including graceful fallback to DTMF, agent transfer, and error handling

* Implement speech analytics and quality insights enabling actionable reporting and continuous improvement of customer experience and agent performance

* Define and socialize reference architectures, standards, and reusable patterns for Connect implementations (flow modularization, logging/tracing, resilience patterns, data handling)

* Establish infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD approaches for Amazon Connect and dependent AWS resources (versioning, environment promotion, safe rollout/rollback practices)

* Partner with Product, Engineering, Security, and Contact Center Operations to translate business outcomes into technical designs, estimates, and delivery plans; lead design reviews and influence decisions as a hands-on IC

* Ensure solutions meet security, privacy, and compliance needs (least-privilege access, encryption, PII handling/redaction where applicable, call recording governance, auditability)

* Drive operational readiness (monitoring/alerting, dashboards, runbooks, capacity planning, incident response support) to ensure stable 24x7 voice experiences where required

* Continuously evaluate and adopt new Amazon Connect capabilities and best practices to improve reliability, maintainability, cost, and customer outcomes

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:

* 5+ years of experience designing and delivering contact center / IVR / voice solutions in production environments

* 3+ years of hands-on experience implementing Amazon Connect voice (contact flows, routing, queues, metrics/monitoring, agent experience fundamentals) with at least one end-to-end rollout and major enhancement…