Optum Insight is improving the flow of health data and information to create a more connected system. We remove friction and drive alignment between care providers and payers, and ultimately consumers. Our deep expertise in the industry and innovative technology empower us to help organizations reduce costs while improving risk management, quality and revenue growth. Ready to help us deliver results that improve lives? Join us in making healthcare work better for everyone through people-led, responsible AI while Caring. Connecting. Growing together.
Begin your career at UnitedHealth Group and help make health care work better for everyone. Through our Early Careers programs, you'll gain meaningful experience, tackle real business challenges, and contribute to work that impacts millions of lives.
Across UnitedHealthcare and Optum, we're united by a common purpose: improving the health and well-being of the people and communities we serve. You'll work alongside talented colleagues, develop new skills, and be supported by a culture of innovation, inclusion, and continuous learning.
No matter where your journey starts, you'll have the opportunity to grow, make an impact, and help shape the future of health care.
**The full-time position located in Eden Prairie, MN, Nashville, TN or Washington, DC will be available starting in 2027** **UnitedHealth Group is not able to offer visa sponsorship now or in the future for position** **Relocation is not offered for the Consultant Development Program**
The Consultant Development Program (CDP) is an Early Careers program that launches recent college graduates into real consulting work, solving problems and shaping outcomes for health care clients from day one. CDP sits within Optum Advisory, giving participants the chance to work with a diverse range of health care clients across multiple engagements. As a CDP participant, you'll join a cohort spanning multiple tracks, all united by a shared focus on serving our clients and making the health system work better for everyone. You'll complete structured consulting and healthcare training, receive mentorship from experienced leaders, and gain experience across multiple client engagements while developing capabilities in strategic problem solving, data-driven decision making, client relationship management, change management, AI-enabled consulting, and healthcare industry expertise. Program completion includes alignment into an Optum Advisory practice and typically takes 1.5-2.5 years to complete. By combining real client delivery, structured learning, mentorship, healthcare industry specialization, and AI-enabled consulting experiences from day one, CDP provides a differentiated foundation for a long-term consulting career. The AI/ML Engineering track pairs this core consulting foundation with hands-on exposure to building the AI/ML solutions - LLM applications, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, and early agentic AI workflows - that increasingly power client engagements, working alongside Optum.ai engineering and data science teams.
Primary Responsibilities:
Working directly with our internal and external clients to solve complex business problems by performing the following types of activities:
- Support strategic business transformation through the application of technology, AI, process improvement, and innovation to complex client problems
- Apply and integrate AI tools into client workflows - research, analysis, reporting, dashboards, and automation - building and optimizing prompts along the way
- Participate in client-facing interactions and presentations while developing relationship-building and consulting skills in project delivery and change management settings
- Support project delivery through requirements analysis, presentation development, meeting management, project planning, and project budget support
- Develop and support the delivery of client-facing presentations, building executive communication and storytelling skills, and provide strategic support to clients implementing organizational enhancements
- Support the development and fine-tuning of LLM-based applications for client and internal use cases, including prompt engineering and API integration with commercial models (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic/Claude, Gemini)
- Contribute to retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipeline work and early agentic AI workflows - document ingestion, chunking, vector search, tool-use, and planning patterns - under the guidance of senior engineers
- Assist with testing, evaluation, and monitoring of AI/ML solutions as they move toward production, including output-quality checks, hallucination review, and human-in-the-loop evaluation
- Apply responsible-AI and healthcare data considerations (PHI/PII protection, privacy and regulatory requirements, governance guardrails) when supporting AI/ML solution development
- Collaborate with Optum.ai engineering, data science, and product teams to translate client business requirements into technical AI/ML solution components, and communicate progress, risks, and trade-offs to client and internal stakeholders
Optum Advisory provides consulting support to a wide range of health care clients. Some example projects might include:
- Supporting development of go-to-market strategy and business case to bring a new product or service to market by providing an opportunity analysis derived through complex data navigation
- Supporting development of an AI adoption roadmap to help a health system responsibly scale AI-enabled clinical and administrative tools across the organization
- Supporting the build of a RAG-based knowledge assistant for a health system's clinical documentation workflows, from data ingestion through evaluation
- Supporting the development and integration an LLM-powered prior authorization assistant for a payer client, including prompt design and evaluation against real case outcomes
- Supporting the build of an early agentic workflow that automates intake and triage for a provider's call center, learning tool-use and escalation logic under senior engineer guidance
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.
What You'll Do:
- Apply AI tools to solve business problems within your domain
- Build and optimize prompts for analysis, reporting, and automation
- Integrate AI into workflows (e.g., reporting, dashboards, operations processes)
- Analyze data using AI-enabled tools and generate insights
- Collaborate with teams to identify opportunities for AI-driven improvements
- Ensure responsible and compliant use of AI solutions
Required Qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, data science, engineering, or a related technical field from an accredited college or university, or equivalent experience. Degree must have been earned within the past 24 months, with all coursework completed prior to the start of employment and degree completion verified within 6-8 weeks of starting
- 1+ years of coursework, internship, research, or project experience in machine learning, AI engineering, or applied data science, including contributing to production ML systems
- 1+ years of experience using Python for machine learning, AI, or applied data science through coursework, internships, research, or projects
- 1+ years of experience through coursework, internships, research, or projects building or contributing to Generative AI or LLM applications, including prompt engineering or LLM API integrations
- Experience using AI-assisted development ('vibe coding') tools such as Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, or similar
- Exposure to retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems and vector search pipelines
- Ability to work in office on a hybrid schedule (3 days in office) in one of our 3 locations (Eden Prairie, MN, Nashville, TN or Washington D.C.) for the duration of the program
- Ability to Travel up to 50% for the Consultant Development Program, dependent on project needs and location
- Must be eligible to work in the U.S. without company sponsorship, now or in the future, for employment-based work authorization (F-1 students with practical training and candidates requiring H-1Bs, TNs, etc. will not be considered) F-1 visa holders with Optional Practical Training (OPT) who will require H-1B status, TNs, or current H-1B visa holders will not be considered. H1-B and green card sponsorship is not available for this position
Preferred Qualifications:
- 3.0 GPA
- Healthcare experience or demonstrated interest in healthcare
- Experience with LLM orchestration frameworks such as LangChain, LlamaIndex, or Semantic Kernel
- Experience deploying AI systems on cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or GCP
- Experience working in regulated environments with responsible AI governance requirements
- Demonstrated intellectual curiosity and learning ability
- Exposure to agentic AI concepts, including tool-calling, planning frameworks, or multi-agent workflows
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 $60,200 - $107,400 annually based on full-time employment. We comply with all minimum wage laws as applicable.
At UnitedHealth Group, our mission is to help people live healthier lives and help make the health system work better for everyone. Together, we are shaping the future of healthcare by harnessing technology and innovation to make care simpler to navigate, more affordable and more connected for the people we serve. We are committed to creating an inclusive workplace where everyone feels welcomed, valued, heard and respected, empowering people to bring their authentic selves to work and strengthening our collective impact through diverse talents, backgrounds, experiences and perspectives.
UnitedHealth Group and its affiliated brands are 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 and its affiliated brands are a drug-free workplace. Candidates are required to pass a drug test before beginning employment.
