Principal Data Scientist - Remote at UnitedHealth Group
Eden Prairie, MN
$112,700–$193,200from the description
Jul 28, 2026
Eden Prairie, MN
Jul 29, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior individual-contributor data science role at Optum AI, UnitedHealth Group's enterprise AI team, focused on designing and shipping production-grade ML and Generative AI systems for healthcare use cases. Day-to-day work spans building LLM-powered pipelines (RAG, domain-adapted models, AI copilots), agentic AI architectures, and scalable ML infrastructure including feature stores, model serving, and monitoring. Strong fit for experienced ML practitioners with deep Python and LLM engineering backgrounds who want to apply AI at large healthcare scale.
Senior level · 10+ years · Remote · Bachelor's required · Full-time
Advertised as Principal, but the requirements read as Senior.
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 120 people nationally plausibly meet what this posting asks for (data scientists). range 45–150
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $122,874 (middle half $87,544–$162,374). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 29, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (6)
The title 'Principal Data Scientist' is advertised, but the scope and requirements (10+ years total, 7+ years production ML) align with a Senior band; 'Principal' at this company appears to be a title convention rather than an org-wide technical authority role in the Staff/Principal sense of the seniority ladder.
The role is remote-US with an in-office requirement (minimum 4 days/week) for candidates in the Minneapolis or Washington, D.C. areas specifically. The CBSA reflects the Minneapolis headquarters; D.C.-area candidates would fall under the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria CBSA.
Deep learning, representation learning, time-series modeling, survival analysis, and probabilistic modeling are listed as required techniques under Primary Responsibilities rather than a formal Requirements section; 'deep learning' is captured as a representative must-have for the modeling expertise gate. The others are methodologies rather than named tools and are omitted per extraction rules.
Healthcare data standards (claims, EHR, ICD, CPT, SNOMED, FHIR, HL7) appear under Preferred Qualifications; FHIR/HL7 are the only named tools captured — ICD, CPT, SNOMED, and 'claims/EHR' are domain knowledge concepts rather than discrete technologies.
The alternative occupation code 15-1252 (Software Developers) is noted as a runner-up given the strong emphasis on building and deploying production ML systems and agentic AI infrastructure, which overlaps significantly with software engineering work.
Ignored 1 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): ML lifecycle management.
Read the full posting
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