Senior Data Scientist - Network Analytics & AI Enablement

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.

About The Role

UnitedHealthcare is expanding our data science presence in Ireland. We are hiring multiple Senior Data Scientists across our Network Analytics and AI Enablement teams.

The aim of these roles is to apply advanced analytics to lower the cost of healthcare for our members, while improving quality and access.

These are hands-on roles designed for solid builders who want to increase scope over time, owning key workstreams today and growing toward end-to-end technical leadership with mentorship from Principal Data Scientists and Data Science Directors.

You will operate with a high degree of autonomy to deliver high-impact analytics by framing problems, developing approaches, coding solutions, and partnering with engineering and business teams to implement solutions in production and operations.

Because we have multiple openings across two teams, candidates do not need to have experience in every responsibility listed below. We are open to candidates with depth in some areas and interest in expanding into others.

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

• Build, test, and deploy analytics/data science solutions through hands-on coding, owning meaningful workstreams that deliver measurable improvements in healthcare cost, quality, and access
• Build and use LLM-assisted workflows (prompt engineering, retrieval, human-in-the-loop review) and implement evaluation practices (test cases, automated checks, monitoring) to validate correctness and consistency of outputs
• Write maintainable, production-quality Python/R and SQL, contributing to pipelines, tools, and models, and partnering with data/software engineering to operationalize solutions
• Partner with business stakeholders to translate questions into clear analytical problem statements, success metrics, and delivery plans; communicate progress and results in a concise, actionable way
• Take joint ownership with Data Engineering for the availability, quality, and enrichment of our data
• Identify and assess analytics and ML opportunities, define requirements and acceptance criteria, and contribute to solution design aligned with team goals
• Apply advanced analytics techniques (e.g., anomaly detection, pattern recognition, forecasting, segmentation) to surface emerging risks/opportunities and inform interventions
• Contribute to solid team practices through code reviews, sharing best practices, and knowledge-sharing
• Demonstrate solid curiosity and energy for emerging data science and applied AI capabilities, learning new techniques, sharing learnings with the team, and translating promising approaches into practical improvements
• Continue building domain expertise in healthcare and the U.S. healthcare system to ensure solutions are context-aware and impactful

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

• Undergraduate degree in mathematics, statistics, actuarial science, data science, physics, computer science, engineering or related quantitative area
• Proven extensive experience with SQL and R/Python or other analytics languages
• Demonstrated experience using programming to solve complex technical problems
• Proven experience applying analytics and data science in a business context to drive insights and outcomes
• Demonstrated effective communication skills

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's degree, PhD in a quantitative field or relevant professional qualification

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 Traveller community, or any other characteristic protected by law. Optum is a drug-free workplace. © 2026 Optum Services (Ireland) Limited. All rights reserved.

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