Senior Data Scientist- Dublin / Letterkenny

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.

In healthcare, evolution doesn’t just happen. It takes innovation, imagination, and a passion for solving problems in new and better ways. And innovation is taking place at a lightning-fast pace every day at Optum. As the fastest growing part of the UnitedHealth Group family of businesses, we’re expanding our team in Ireland and creating excellent opportunities for those who want greater purpose and more impact in their work. We’ll provide the investment, support, and resources to advance your career. You’ll provide the talent, ambition, and drive.

About the role

Optum’s Payment Integrity Decision Intelligence division is expanding and seeking a Senior Data Scientist to help drive our mission of achieving accurate and effortless claims payments through advanced analytics and machine learning. We are looking for a disciplined, self-motivated professional with expertise in large language models (LLMs), predictive modeling, and healthcare data analytics. The ideal candidate will have a strong portfolio of projects and a passion for solving complex problems using data.

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 offices and telecommuting from a home-based office in a hybrid work model.

Primary Responsibilities of the Senior Data Scientist:

• Design and implement end-to-end data science pipelines, encompassing data ingestion, feature engineering, model development, deployment, and performance monitoring.
• Utilize large language models (LLMs) to enhance and expand analytic methodologies across core product lines.
• Collaborate with engineering and product teams to deploy robust, scalable machine learning models in production environments.
• Effectively communicate complex technical concepts, insights, and recommendations to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Lead innovation initiatives in machine learning and AI, identifying and executing opportunities to enhance model performance, operational efficiency, and business value.
• Operate independently to solve complex, high-impact problems and drive strategic data science initiatives across teams.
• Mentor and support junior data scientists by promoting technical excellence, code quality, and collaborative best practices across the team.
• Evaluate and integrate emerging technologies and methodologies (e.g., foundation models, retrieval-augmented generation) to maintain a cutting-edge data science practice.

  You will 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 providing development for other roles you may be interested in.

Required Qualifications of the Senior Data Scientist:

• Master’s degree or higher in Applied Mathematics, Physics, Computer Science, Statistics, Data Science or related technical field or equivalent experience

• Experience developing and deploying predictive models using machine learning, deep learning, or related techniques OR PhD in a related field with strong applied research experience

• Familiarity with large language model (LLM) frameworks (e.g., Hugging Face Transformers, LangChain, LangGraph, OpenAI APIs)

• Experience using machine learning libraries and frameworks such as Scikit-learn, PyTorch, TensorFlow, and SparkML in applied modeling

• Extensive experience programming in Python or R for data science, machine learning

  Preferred Qualifications of the Senior Data Scientist:

• Knowledge of work with US healthcare data (claims, clinical records, authorization, provider contracts)

• Hands-on experience implementing/adapting published academic research into tangible solutions.

• Ability to understand emerging prompting strategies/research and evaluate benefits/trade-offs.

  Please note you must currently be eligible to work and remain indefinitely without any restrictions in the country to which you are making an application. Proof will be required to support your application.

  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.

  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 Traveler 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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