Principal Site Reliability Engineer

Principal Site Reliability Engineer

Location: Remote, United States

Job Description:

Requisition number: 2371904

Job category: Technology

Primary location: Minnetonka, MN

Overtime status: Exempt

Travel: No

Optum Tech is a global leader in health care innovation. Our teams develop cutting-edge solutions that help people live healthier lives and help make the health system work better for everyone. From advanced data analytics and AI to cybersecurity, we use innovative approaches to solve some of health care's most complex challenges. Your contributions here have the potential to change lives. Ready to build the next breakthrough? Join us to start Caring. Connecting. Growing together.

We are seeking a Principal Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) to define and scale reliability practices across large-scale cloud platforms.

This is a senior individual contributor role focused on setting SRE standards, influencing engineering teams, and driving reliability through automation and AI-enabled operations.

This is a remote role with preference for candidates located in MN.

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.

What Makes This Role Unique:

• Define and influence SRE best practices across multiple platforms and teams
• Drive adoption of AI-enabled reliability and operational innovation (AIOps)
• Work on mission-critical healthcare systems at enterprise scale
• Blend hands-on technical depth with strategic influence
• Partner across engineering, platform, and security teams to elevate reliability standards

Primary Responsibilities:

• Define and drive SRE standards across teams
• Lead implementation of:
  • SLOs, SLIs, error budgets
  • Observability (metrics, logs, tracing)
  • Resiliency patterns (failover, self-healing)
• Improve reliability through automation and proactive risk mitigation
• Drive reliability practices in Azure environments
• Apply AIOps (anomaly detection, intelligent alerting, automation)
• Influence engineering teams without direct authority

What Success Looks Like:

• Established consistent SRE practices and standards across teams
• Improved system reliability, observability, and incident response maturity
• Delivered measurable gains in uptime, performance, and operational efficiency
• Enabled AI-driven improvements in reliability and operations

Why Join Optum?
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:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
• 10+ years of experience in Site Reliability Engineering, Software Engineering, or Cloud Engineering
• Experience influencing multiple teams or platforms without direct ownership
• Demonstrated experience improving reliability through automation, tooling, or AI-enabled approaches
• Proven hands-on expertise in:
  • Reliability engineering (SLOs, SLIs, incident management, observability)
  • Distributed systems in cloud environments (Azure preferred)
• Solid understanding of system design, performance, scalability, and failure modes

Preferred Qualifications:  

• Experience implementing AI/ML or AIOps solutions in production environments (e.g., anomaly detection, alert optimization, automation)
• Experience standardizing observability frameworks (e.g., OpenTelemetry or similar)
• Experience working in complex enterprise or regulated environments
• Background supporting large-scale, mission-critical systems
• Proven ability to influence senior technical stakeholders
• Location: MN 
   

*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 $xx,xxx to $xx,xxx 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 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.