Sr. Data Scientist - Remote

Requisition Number: 2368867
At UnitedHealthcare, we're simplifying the health care experience, creating healthier communities and removing barriers to quality care. The work you do here impacts the lives of millions of people for the better. Come build the health care system of tomorrow, making it more responsive, affordable and optimized. Ready to make a difference? Join us to start Caring. Connecting. Growing together.
This role is for a data scientist needed to advance OPTiN prioritization and personalization efforts across multiple channels. The position will help design and support AI-driven decisioning approaches that improve the relevance, effectiveness, and responsible use of recommendations for members and the business through contributions to GenAct and MART. GenAct is a de-prioritization model that drives personalized suppression and actional conversation outcomes for phone channels. MART is comprehensive statistical based testing framework. In partnership with cross-functional stakeholders, the role will strengthen testing, monitoring, governance, and data integrity practices to enable scalable and compliant deployment of next best action capabilities aligned to enterprise goals.
Government Programs Marketing and the Role of Offer Analytics:
Government Programs Marketing supports Medicare, DSNP, Medicaid, MedSupp, IFP, and related member populations by creating relevant, compliant, and personalized engagement experiences across digital, telephonic, and emerging channels. The organization's marketing priorities depend on understanding members' needs, delivering the right message at the right time, improving digital adoption, supporting Stars and clinical outcomes, and enabling sustainable growth and retention through modernized MarTech capabilities.
Within this environment, the Offer Analytics team serves as a critical analytical and decisioning partner. The team helps transform offer strategy from static business rules into a more member-centric, value-based, and measurable capability. By combining offer eligibility, member behavior, channel engagement, business value, model scoring, and test design, the team enables prioritization and personalization approaches that balance member relevance with enterprise objectives.

• Advance intelligent offer prioritization through OPTiN, helping determine which eligible offers or next best actions should be surfaced first across member touchpoints
• Support personalization at scale by integrating member-level data, offer attributes, channel behavior, interaction history, and business value into analytical decisioning frameworks
• Enable stronger measurement and test discipline through MART, including A/B testing, holdout design, readout standards, and success metrics that connect engagement outcomes to business impact
• Improve suppression and de-prioritization strategies through GenAct and related analytics, reducing repetitive or low-value outreach while improving actionable conversation outcomes
• Partner with offer owners, marketing leaders, product, data, engineering, legal, compliance, and channel teams to ensure offer strategies are operationally feasible, analytically sound, and aligned to regulatory expectations
• Provide insights on offer performance, eligibility shifts, member engagement, channel attribution, and optimization opportunities so Government Programs Marketing can make informed decisions about where to scale, adjust, or retire offer strategies

You'll enjoy the flexibility to work remotely * from anywhere within the U.S. as you take on some tough challenges.
For all hires in the Minneapolis or Washington, D.C. area, you will be required to work in the office a minimum of four days per week.
Primary Responsibilities:

• Support the design, governance, and ongoing advancement of OPTiN prioritization and personalization approaches for next best actions, helping deliver AI-driven recommendations that are relevant, responsible, and aligned to business and consumer needs
• Drive expansion of OPTiN prioritization efforts for primarily offers and other next best actions across additional channels (App, Chat, Dashboard Care Hub) and lines of business ( DSNP, MedSupp, IFP) ensuring approaches can be adapted to varying consumer journeys, business needs, and operational requirements
• Identify and mitigate risks related to data integrity, model performance, bias, fairness, model drifts, data drifts and potential PII/PHI exposure
• Support the development of MART, a comprehensive statistical based A/B testing framework, to drive prioritization optimization efforts. This initiative aims to improve next best action performance, decision quality, and deliver business outcomes via OPTiN model
• Develop data science-driven offer performance and journey insights reporting, including dashboards and analytical outputs that surface trends, measure impact, identify optimization opportunities, and inform stakeholder decision-making
• Establish data source quality controls and end-to-end system flow checks to identify and address upstream and downstream issues that could impact model performance, operational reliability, and AI-driven decision quality
• Contributes to the development and enhancement of testing methodologies for both traditional and generative AI use cases, including the GenAct initiative, to support the implementation of personalized suppression strategies across all active channels and promote more actionable conversational outcomes for phone channels
• Partner with legal, compliance, data, engineering, product, and AI teams to validate test plans, results, and governance requirements
• Stay current on emerging AI, machine learning, and healthcare regulatory developments and translate them into practical governance and testing approaches

You'll 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 provide development for other roles you may be interested in.
Required Qualifications:
The ideal candidate should bring the following qualifications to successfully perform this role:

• 3+ years of experience in data science, advanced analytics, machine learning, or applied statistics, including hands-on experience developing, evaluating, and improving predictive or prescriptive models in complex enterprise environments
• Experience working with large, complex healthcare, marketing, member, or consumer data sets to generate insights, build analytical solutions, and support data-driven decisioning
• Experience supporting personalization, prioritization, next best action, recommendation, suppression, or decisioning strategies across digital, telephonic, or omnichannel environments
• Experience establishing data quality controls, source-to-output validation checks, and monitoring practices that support reliable, scalable, and compliant analytical solutions
• Solid proficiency with analytical and programming tools such as Python, SQL, R, SAS, Snowflake, Databricks, or similar platforms used for data preparation, modeling, monitoring, and reporting
• Solid understanding of statistical methods, experimental design, A/B testing, holdout testing, hypothesis testing, and performance measurement approaches used to evaluate model and business impact
• Knowledge of machine learning lifecycle practices, including feature development, model validation, performance monitoring, model drift, data drift, bias, fairness, and responsible AI considerations
• Proven ability to partner effectively with cross-functional teams, including marketing, product, data engineering, legal, compliance, technology, channel operations, and business stakeholders
• Proven solid communication and storytelling skills, with the ability to translate complex analytical findings into clear recommendations, dashboards, readouts, and executive-ready insights

Preferred Qualifications:
In addition to the required qualifications, the preferred candidate would bring experience that strengthens the team's ability to scale offer analytics, decisioning, governance, and measurable business impact:

• Experience with healthcare marketing, Medicare, Medicaid, DSNP, MedSupp, IFP, or other regulated member engagement environments
• Experience applying advanced analytics or machine learning to MarTech, CRM, digital engagement, contact center, mobile app, chat, or omnichannel activation use cases
• Experience developing performance dashboards, executive readouts, value measurement frameworks, or business impact analyses that connect analytical outcomes to financial, operational, or member experience results
• Familiarity with offer decisioning, next best action, prioritization, suppression, personalization, recommendation engines, or customer/member journey analytics
• Working knowledge of responsible AI, model governance, regulatory compliance, privacy controls, and risk mitigation practices in environments involving sensitive customer or member data
• Proven ability to influence without direct authority by aligning technical teams, business owners, channel partners, and leadership stakeholders around common decisioning and measurement approaches

*All employees working remotely will be required to adhere to UnitedHealth Group's Telecommuter Policy.
Pay is based on several factors including but not limited to local labor markets, education, work experience, certifications, etc. In addition to your salary, we offer benefits such as, a comprehensive benefits package, incentive and recognition programs, equity stock purchase and 401k contribution (all benefits are subject to eligibility requirements). No matter where or when you begin a career with us, you'll find a far-reaching choice of benefits and incentives. The salary for this role will range from $91,700 - $163,700 annually based on full-time employment. We comply with all minimum wage laws as applicable.
Application Deadline: This will be posted for a minimum of 2 business days or until a sufficient candidate pool has been collected. Job posting may come down early due to volume of applicants.
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.
UnitedHealth Group is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer under applicable law and qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, national origin, religion, age, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by local, state, or federal laws, rules, or regulations.
UnitedHealth Group is a drug - free workplace. Candidates are required to pass a drug test before beginning employment.