Databricks Data Engineer

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.

The EL3 Databricks Data Engineer will design, build, and optimize scalable data pipelines supporting Claims Payment Integrity (PI) analytics across Medicare & Retirement, Community & States, and Employer & Individual businesses. The role focuses on developing governed lakehouse‑based data assets, integrating claims and provider datasets, and ensuring high‑quality data availability for PI, actuarial, audit, recovery, and financial analytics teams.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Data Engineering and Lakehouse Development
  • Build scalable ETL/ELT pipelines in Databricks using PySpark, Spark SQL, Delta Live Tables, and workflows
  • Engineer curated datasets across bronze/silver/gold layers for claims, pricing, provider, RCM, and member data
  • Implement Delta Lake best practices including ACID transactions, schema evolution, CDC, and optimized storage formats
  • Automate ingestion/transformation of large datasets from claims systems, provider files, call center platforms, and EHR feeds
• Data Quality and Governance
  • Perform reconciliation and validation of claim‑related financial datasets
  • Enforce PHI‑compliant design patterns using Unity Catalog, governance guardrails, and cluster policies
  • Implement pipeline monitoring, logging, and Spark performance optimization
• Platform and Collaboration
  • Work with Data Analysts, Data Scientists, and PI SMEs to translate analytic requirements into production data assets
  • Support cluster optimization, table indexing (Z‑ORDER), and cost‑efficient lakehouse operations
  • Participate in Agile ceremonies and ensure timely delivery of engineering tasks
• 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:

• Bachelor's degree (4‑year)
• 8+ years of Data Engineering experience in healthcare
• Hands-on experience with Databricks (PySpark, SQL, Delta Lake, Jobs/Workflows)
• Solid Spark performance tuning experience
• Experience engineering data for claims, provider, and membership domains
• Solid understanding of healthcare data models and adjudication flows

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with Call center data (member and provider interactions), Provider RCM datasets, and EHR/clinical data
• Experience with DLT, CI/CD, and MLflow‑integrated pipelines
• Exposure to actuarial or PI forecasting workflows

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.