Optum is a global organisation 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.
At UnitedHealth Group and Optum, we want to make healthcare work better for everyone. This depends on hiring the best and brightest. With a thriving ecosystem of investment and innovation, our business in Ireland is constantly growing to support the healthcare needs of the future.
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Our teams are at the forefront of building and adapting the latest technologies to propel healthcare forward in a way that better serves everyone. With our hands at work across all aspects of health, we use the most advanced development tools, AI, data science and innovative approaches to make the healthcare system work better for everyone.
As a Principal Data Scientist, you will play a crucial leadership role in the development and implementation of advanced reporting, analytic approaches, and tooling. You will work closely with other leaders to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the entire organisation. We're looking for a thought leader who thrives on architecting new solutions to solve tough challenges, and to help us on our mission of helping people live healthier lives.
The successful candidate will collaborate cross-functionally with various business and data analytics teams, have proven business analysis experience, and the ability to manage multiple competing business projects at one time.
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 or Letterkenny office and telecommuting from a home-based office in a hybrid work model.
Primary Responsibilities:
- Architect the solutions; collaborate with stakeholders and internal business partners to understand business requirements and translate them into analytical solutions
- Design, code, test, document, and maintain high-quality and scalable Big Data solutions, delivered on time
- Accountability for socialising to the leadership; provide insights and guidance into actionable analytic findings through clear, succinct written and oral summaries, tables, charts, reports or presentations, that can be understood by a variety of audiences
- Synthesise business requirements and translate into technical specifications. Define technical, data and system configuration specifications and business analysis requirements
- Identify gaps, process improvement, and automation opportunities, and lead such activities to execution
- Anticipate customer needs, proactively develop & deliver solutions to meet them, and forecast/predict the impact to the business
- Develop insights regarding the effectiveness of existing analytic tools and methodologies and recommend changes
- Utilise a broad range of analytic approaches including predictive analytics, issue detection, trend analysis, and data visualisation to best address the business priorities
- Apply knowledge of statistics, machine learning, programming, data modeling, simulation, and advanced mathematics to recognize patterns, identify opportunities, pose business questions, and make valuable discoveries leading to prototype development and product improvement
- Develop proficiency with departmental programming, analytic, and reporting software and other tools
- Comply with and contribute to departmental standards related to data, data governance, project planning, validation, and documentation
- Migrate data from legacy systems to new solutions
- Mentor junior resources to develop their analytic skills
- Design conceptional and logical data model and flowcharts
You will be rewarded and recognised 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 providing development for other roles you may be interested in.
Required Qualifications:
- Bachelor's Degree in relevant field (data science, analytics, mathematics, economics, business, statistics, engineering, or finance) or equivalent experience
- Extensive experience working within technical and business professionals in a matrix management environment, managing multiple priorities and deadlines
- Proven track record of leading analytics projects requiring experience with statistical models with an understanding of different statistical methods and approaches
- Expert level of proficiency in SQL, and at least one scripting language such as SAS, R, or Python
- Advanced level of proficiency with Data Visualisation / Dashboard tools (e.g., Power BI)
- Advanced experience in Machine Learning or AI model development and deployment
- Experience working within a software development team and using version control systems such as Git
Preferred Qualifications:
- Ph. D or Master's Degree in relevant field (data science, analytics, mathematics, economics, business, statistics, engineering, or finance) or equivalent experience
- Experience or knowledge of cloud-based data analytics e.g. (AWS, Azure, Snowflake)
- Experience in medical data including hospital, ancillary, and physician
- Experience in Generative AI Use Cases leveraging LLM's and exposure to LLMs like Langchain, RAG, ChatGpt 4 and Chatgpt 4oc
- Understanding of Medicare risk adjustment programs
- Experience building data engineering pipelines using frameworks such as Apache Airflow
Soft Skills:
- Clearly demonstrated expertise in problem solving, data management, study design, and study implementation
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. © 2025 Optum Services (Ireland) Limited. All rights reserved.
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