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 are seeking a Principal Engineer for the Eligibility team who can combine hands-on engineering depth with strong architecture, design, and team leadership capabilities.

This role is ideal for a lead engineer who enjoys solving complex technical problems, writing production code, mentoring engineers, and shaping the technical direction of mission-critical platform capabilities.

The Principal Engineer will be part of 1-2 scrum teams and will spend approx 50%25 of the time coding & implementing solutions, 25%25 leading architecture & design, and 25%25 providing team leadership, mentoring, and engineering management responsibilities.

The selected candidate should have deep experience with microservices, APIs, distributed systems, event-driven architecture, and data-intensive streaming applications. They should be comfortable leading design discussions, reviewing architecture, writing code, mentoring engineers, and partnering with product and business stakeholders to deliver scalable and reliable platform capabilities.

This role requires someone who can operate at both strategic and execution levels. The right candidate will be able to define architecture direction, break down complex problems, implement critical components, guide scrum teams, and help improve engineering quality across the platform.

Primary Responsibilities

Hands-On Engineering Delivery

Actively contribute code as part of scrum teams

Design, develop, test, and deliver production-ready software

Build and enhance microservices, APIs, streaming applications, and data processing components

Own complex technical stories from design through implementation

Contribute to sprint commitments and participate in backlog refinement, sprint planning, demos, and retrospectives

Write clean, maintainable, secure, and scalable code

Support code reviews and ensure engineering best practices are followed

Troubleshoot complex application, data, integration, and production issues

Help improve performance, reliability, observability, and operational readiness of CIP services

Architecture, Design, and Technical Leadership





Lead solution design for high-impact capabilities

Define architecture patterns for microservices, streaming applications, APIs, and data-intensive workflows

Guide teams on system design, event-driven architecture, scalability, resiliency, and fault tolerance

Partner with architects, product owners, engineering leads, and business stakeholders to translate business needs into technical solutions

Create and review design documents for complex features and platform changes

Help standardize design patterns across CIP teams

Drive technical decisions that reduce complexity and improve long-term maintainability

Identify technical debt and recommend practical remediation plans

Provide technical direction during production incidents and critical issue resolution

People Leadership and Team Enablement

Provide technical coaching and mentoring to engineers across one or two scrum teams

Support growth of engineers by helping improve engineering discipline across design, coding, testing, deployment, and support

Participate in hiring, interviewing, onboarding, and talent assessment

Provide input into performance feedback and development plans where applicable

Help team members understand architecture direction and engineering expectations

Foster a culture of ownership, accountability, learning, and high-quality delivery

Partner with engineering management to balance delivery goals, technical quality, and team development

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:

11+ years of software engineering experience

Proven experience designing and building microservices-based systems

Experience delivering data-intensive applications with high volume, high reliability, and strong operational needs





Solid experience with event-driven or streaming-based applications

Solid coding experience in Java & Spring Boot

Experience with REST APIs and API design principles

Experience with Kafka or equivalent streaming platforms

Experience with relational and NoSQL databases

Experience working in Agile delivery teams

Proven solid hands-on development experience with enterprise-scale applications

Proven solid architecture and design skills for distributed systems

Proven ability to contribute directly to sprint delivery while also providing architecture guidance

Proven solid communication skills with both technical and non-technical stakeholders

Proven automation mindset and a continuous leaner.

Experience with latest AI tool sets to improve productivity

Preferred Qualifications

Experience with Google cloud platform

Experience with React

Experience with Kubernetes, containers, CI/CD pipelines, and DevOps practices

Experience with GraphQL, event sourcing, change data capture, schema management, or data integration patterns

Experience modernizing legacy systems into API-first, microservices, or event-driven platforms

Experience mentoring engineers or leading engineering teams

Experience supporting production systems with high availability and operational complexity

Healthcare or payer platform experience

Core Technical Skills

Java / Spring Boot

Microservices architecture

API design and development

Event-driven architecture

Kafka or streaming platforms

Data-intensive application design

Cloud-native development

Database design and query optimization

Observability, monitoring, and production support

CI/CD and DevOps automation

Security and resiliency patterns

Core Leadership Skills

Hands-on technical leadership

Practical problem solving

Delivery ownership

Architecture

X-team collaboration

Mentoring and coaching

Communication

Engineering quality focus & ownership

Ability to influence without relying only on authority

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 workplace and enabling and delivering equitable care that addresses health disparities and improves health outcomes — an enterprise priority reflected in our mission.

📌 Principal Software Engineer (Noida)
🏢 UnitedHealth Group
📍 Noida