Principal Data Scientist- Dublin & Letterkenny, Ireland

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 investment, support, and resources to advance your career. You'll provide the talent, ambition, and drive.  

Are you ready to take the next step in your data science and engineering career? We're seeking a highly motivated Principal Data Scientist to join our dynamic Data Analytics team. In this senior role, you'll architect and implement scalable analytics and AI solutions that drive business strategy, deliver actionable insights, and enable data-driven decision-making across the organization. As part of this role, you will also have opportunities to work on the deployment and operationalization of advanced analytics solutions including AI and large language models (LLMs) to accelerate innovation and advance key organizational strategies. 

You'll thrive in a start-up-like environment that values agility, experimentation, and rapid iteration. We operate with a strong sense of ownership and urgency-delivering quick, high-quality results while continuously improving our solutions based on feedback. The ideal candidate is comfortable balancing speed with accuracy and enjoys working in an atmosphere where priorities can shift rapidly to address new opportunities. 

We value curiosity, initiative, and passion for problem-solving. The ideal candidate brings deep experience in designing, building, and optimizing data pipelines and analytical data models that empower business insights and drive strategic decision-making. They excel at transforming complex, raw data into well-structured, reliable datasets that serve as the foundation for impactful analytics initiatives. This candidate thrives in environments that require both independent work and close cross-functional collaboration with stakeholders such as data scientists, analysts, engineers, and business leaders to align technical solutions with organizational strategy. 

If you enjoy engaging with stakeholders to understand their needs, communicating insights clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences, and using advanced analytics to solve pressing business problems-this could be the perfect next step for you. 

Schedule: This is a full-time position with standard working hours of Monday - Friday, 9am - 5pm.

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 of the Principal Data Scientist:

• Lead the end-to-end development of scalable data and ML pipelines, ensuring data and model infrastructure directly supports organizational strategy, analytical models, and critical business decisions. 

• Architect high-performance data models and integrate them seamlessly with ML model development, optimizing for analytics platforms such as cloud-based data warehouses (Snowflake/Redshift/BigQuery). 

• Translate complex business requirements into robust engineered datasets that drive decision-making at all levels of the organization. 

• Rapidly iterate on analytics solutions based on stakeholder feedback; deliver quick turnaround without sacrificing accuracy or quality. 

• Partner with stakeholders across teams (including IT, product owners, operations) to identify opportunities where analytics and ML model can add strategic value. 

• Ensure best practices in code quality documentation standards, testing procedures (unit/integration), data quality checks.

• Drive stakeholder engagement: facilitate discussions and communicate impact of project goals/results; manage expectations throughout project lifecycle. 

• Develop tools or reusable components that empower other analysts to perform self-service analytics efficiently. 

• Mentor team members on engineering best practices within analytics contexts. 

   

  
  You will be rewarded and recognised 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: 

Required Qualifications: 

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics or related discipline or equivalent experience

• Previous experience/ success within an Analytics/Data Engineering/Machine Learning environment focused on agile thinking and innovative solutions 

• Experience designing/building scalable data and ML pipelines using Python/SQL/Spark/Airflow or equivalent frameworks 

• Proven ability to understand complex problems/datasets-and engineer scalable data architectures enabling strategic insights 

• Demonstrated ability to own/lead projects delivering real business impact 

Preferred Qualifications of the Principal Data Scientist:

• MS/PhD in Computer Science/Data Engineering/Statistics/Applied Mathematics or similar numerical discipline 

• Hands-on experience developing and fine-tuning Large Language Models (LLMs) or similar advanced AI models 

• Experience collaborating with Data Scientists/Product Managers/Business Stakeholders delivering end-to-end analytical solutions 

• Experience architecting cloud-based analytical environments (AWS/GCP/Azure) including CI/CD pipelines 

• Familiarity with US healthcare system/billing of medical claims/data environments 

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.

All telecommuters will be required to adhere to the UnitedHealth Group's Telecommuter Policy.

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 marginalised 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. © 2025 Optum Services (Ireland) Limited. All rights reserved.

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