Senior Architect

Requisition Number: 2369796
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.
Provide strategic and hands-on technical leadership to design, evolve, and govern cloud-native and hybrid platform architectures. Drive reliability, scalability, security, and developer productivity across AWS and GCP (with working knowledge of Azure) by setting reference architectures, enabling modern delivery practices, and mentoring engineering teams.
Primary Responsibilities:

• Lead architecture and design of multi-tier, distributed cloud-native systems optimized for high availability, resiliency, scalability, and fault tolerance
• Define reference architectures, design patterns, and best practices to drive consistency across AWS & GCP (with working knowledge of Azure)
• Design standardized compute/platform layers that abstract on-prem vs cloud differences, enabling a consistent runtime and developer experience
• Evaluate architectural options and present clear recommendations to leadership, balancing reliability, security, operational effort, and cost
• Modernize legacy systems into cloud-native and distributed architectures, leveraging managed services to improve reliability and reduce operational overhead
• Provide hands-on platform leadership across Kubernetes (EKS/GKE), serverless, managed data services, and service mesh (Istio/Linkerd) for secure service-to-service communication
• Implement Infrastructure as Code + GitOps delivery using Terraform/CloudFormation/Pulumi with ArgoCD/Flux, supported by robust CI/CD via GitHub Actions/Jenkins
• Embed SRE discipline and observability by design: SLOs/SLIs, error budgets, incident automation, plus metrics/logs/traces using Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, CloudWatch
• Champion security, governance, and compliance through least-privilege IAM, encryption with KMS/Key Vault, secure networking (VPC/VNet/NSGs), and policy-as-code in IaC pipelines
• Drive FinOps and cost optimization with autoscaling, rightsizing, and spend visibility-balancing performance with cost efficiency
• Reduce technical debt and platform complexity by standardizing core capabilities and accelerating delivery of reusable platform services
• Mentor engineers and act as a trusted advisor-communicating complex architecture decisions clearly while enabling governance without blocking innovation
• Multi-tier architecture, cloud-native & hybrid platforms, AWS/GCP, Python, service mesh, platform maturity, mentorship
• Comply with the terms and conditions of the employment contract, company policies and procedures, and any and all directives (such as, but not limited to, transfer and/or re-assignment to different work locations, change in teams and/or work shifts, policies in regards to flexibility of work benefits and/or work environment, alternative work arrangements, and other decisions that may arise due to the changing business environment). The Company may adopt, vary or rescind these policies and directives in its absolute discretion and without any limitation (implied or otherwise) on its ability to do so

Required Qualifications:

• 15+ years in cloud architecture, distributed systems, Kubernetes, Python, Terraform, observability
• Hands-on experience with AWS and GCP; working knowledge of Azure
• Production experience with Kubernetes and Docker
• Experience or familiarity on:
  • Cloud & Infrastructure - AWS, GCP, Azure, Kubernetes, Docker, IaC, networking, serverless
  • DevOps & SRE - CI/CD, GitOps, SRE principles, AIOps, IDPs
  • Security & Governance - IAM, encryption, NSGs, compliance, DevSecOps
  • Scripting & Automation - Bash/Python scripting, APIs, event-driven systems
• Solid distributed systems and multi-tier architecture design experience
• CI/CD and GitOps experience (ArgoCD/Flux; GitHub Actions/Jenkins)
• Proficiency in Python for automation and backend services
• Infrastructure as Code expertise (Terraform; CloudFormation/Pulumi beneficial)
• Solid fundamentals in networking, IAM, encryption, and observability (metrics/logs/traces)
• Demonstrated ability to influence without authority; solid communication and decision-making skills in enterprise environments

Preferred Qualifications:

• AWS/GCP professional certifications; CKA/CKAD
• Certifications, FinOps, regulated industry experience, open-source, AI/ML
• FinOps and cost optimization experience in cloud environments
• Experience with AI/ML infrastructure, MLOps, or AIOps tooling

Leadership Qualities:

• Influence, collaboration, mentorship, strategic thinking

Role Impact:

• Resilient, scalable, and secure cloud platforms with measurable reliability improvements
• Faster delivery through standardized platforms, automation, and GitOps-based deployments
• Improved developer productivity via self-service capabilities and paved-road engineering
• Reduced operational risk and cost through governance, observability, SRE practices, and FinOps controls

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.