Senior UX Designer - IC

Requisition Number: 2366416
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.
We're looking for a Senior UX Designer / Design Lead to shape Ask AI and Generative AI experiences while also leading and managing AI focused designers. This role is ideal for a designer who thrives in fastmoving, ambiguous environments and can balance hands-on AI UX design with people leadership. Focused designers moving, ambiguous environment on AI UX design focused designers moving, ambiguous environments on AI UX design
Primary Responsibilities:

• AI Experience & Interaction Design
  • Design Generative AI chat and Ask AI experiences from an interaction and UX systems perspective
  • Own the surrounding UI and experience layer for chat: task panels, summaries, follow-ups, action bars, results views, history, and controls. ups, action bars, results views, history, and controls. ups, action bars, results views, history, and controls
  • Define agent behaviors, capabilities, and boundaries in the UX (when AI offers suggestions, asks for clarification, or escalates), ensuring users remain in control
  • Translate conversation strategies (provided by Conversational Designers) into scalable UX patterns, clear affordances, and actionable response formats (e.g., cards, checklists, tables, next steps)
  • Design trust and transparency mechanisms: explainability cues, citations, confidence indicators, limits and safety constraints, and retry/feedback pathways.try/feedback pathways.try/feedback pathways
  • Systems Thinking & End-to-end Journeys to End Journeys to End Journeys
  • Create end-to-end AI user journeys and interaction models for chat first and hybrid UI patterns to end AI user journeys first and hybrid UI patterns to end AI user journeys first and hybrid UI patterns
  • Model states and contingencies: uncertainty, partial knowledge, hallucination handling, latency, empty/error/edge states
  • Define handoffs and escalation paths (to human agents, to other product workflows, or to advanced tools) and design recovery mechanisms
  • Ensure mental models are clear about what the AI can/can't do, and how it learns or adapts over time
• Rapid Iteration & Validation
  • Rapidly prototype in Figma (flows, states, components) and collaborate with Engineering for feasibility checks
  • Use usability testing, design reviews, pilots, and lightweight experiments to validate comprehension, trust, and actionability
  • Iterate quickly using analytics, VoC, support signals, and A/B tests; instrument key UX metrics (e.g., task completion, time to value, deflection, satisfaction)
  • Balance speed and rigor, knowing when fidelity and depth are needed versus scrappy learning
• Collaboration & Delivery
  • Partner with Conversational Designers (dialog, tone, conversation structure) to ensure cohesive experiences-the UX/UI reinforces the conversational intent
  • Work closely with Product and Engineering to scope, sequence, and deliver time sensitive milestones; remove ambiguity with clear artifacts and decisions sensitive
  • Collaborate with AI/ML teams to understand model behavior, constraints (latency, context windows, accuracy), and design appropriate controls and fallbacks
  • Contribute to roadmaps and release planning, ensuring design dependencies and risks are visible early
• Responsible & Scalable AI
  • Uphold responsible AI practices-transparency, user consent, recoverability, human in the loop, and safe defaults in the loop, and safe defaults in the loop, and safe defaults
  • Advocate for accessibility (WCAG), inclusive design, and responsiveness across devices and modalities
  • Contribute to AI design systems: reusable patterns for prompts, responses, feedback, explainability, and safety messaging; partner with the core Design System team for componentization and governance
  • Design for regulated environments (privacy, consent, auditability) and align with AI governance guidelines
• People Management & Team Leadership
  • Set expectations for quality, pace, and responsible AI design
  • Provide feedback, performance guidance, and career coaching
  • Help shape team norms for collaboration with Conversational Design
• 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:

• 6+ years in UX/Product Design with shipped work in complex or emerging interaction models
• 2+ years of experience working in AI assisted or assistant like experiences, systems thinking, and data dense UI or workflow design. Assisted or assistant like experiences dense UI assisted or assistant like experiences dense UI
• 2+ years of experience managing and mentoring AI focused UX designers, supporting: focused UX designers
• Experience collaborating closely with Conversational Designers, Product Managers, and Engineers in agile environments
• Manager: Experience managing or mentoring designers
• Proficiency with Figma for fast prototyping and component based design
• Skill development in AI/agentic UX
• Proven decision-making in ambiguous problem spaces making in ambiguous problem spaces making in ambiguous problem spaces
• Proven confidence working at speed
• Proven strength in interaction design, information architecture, and design systems
• Proven practice with usability testing and evidence based iteration (qual + quant).based iteration based iteration
• Demonstrated ability to communicate design decisions, tradeoffs, and rationale clearly across functions

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with Generative AI products: chat/assistants, agentic workflows, or tool use interfaces
• Experience in regulated domains (e.g., healthcare, finance) with awareness of privacy/consent and traceability requirements
• Exposure to multimodal UX (text, voice, images) and cross surface orchestration
• Working knowledge (designer level) of LLMs, agent architectures, prompt patterns, tool/function calling, and evaluation/confidence signaling (at a conceptual level; no model building required)
• Familiarity with instrumentation & experimentation (e.g., event taxonomies, A/B tests) to support rapid learning

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.