Senior Research Engineer, NLP - San Diego, CA
San Diego, CA

Job Description

Do you have compassion and a passion to help others? Transforming healthcare and millions of lives as a result starts with the values you embrace and the passion you bring to achieve your life's best work.(sm)

The Senior Research Engineer, NLP, is a key technical contributor in the design and development of state-of-the-art NLP for medical applications. This position works closely with other NLP specialists, software engineers and subject matter experts on current company technologies, and serves in a technical lead capacity on forward looking projects.

The successful candidate will have a strong background in Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence with an emphasis on text, Information Extraction/Retrieval, and/or associated principles of knowledge representation and ontological design. The successful candidate will be a forward-thinker comfortable with research and design, but also demonstrate a willingness to support team members in the ongoing maintenance of existing systems. Strong technical skills are required, as the successful candidate will be a core contributor on teams responsible for taking ideas from vision to implementation in customer facing production environments where functionality and performance are critical.

Software engineering is the application of engineering to the design, development, implementation, testing and maintenance of software in a systematic method. The roles in this function will cover all primary development activity across all technology functions that ensure we deliver code with high quality for our applications, products and services and to understand customer needs and to develop product roadmaps.

Primary Responsibilities:

* Enhancement of existing company NLP technologies and extension of company NLP solutions to new applications and markets
* Work will involve all aspects of software design and development from solution research to implementation, integration and testing
* Analysis, design, coding, engineering, testing, debugging, standards, methods, tools analysis, documentation, research and development, maintenance, new development, operations and deliver
* Build quality into every output. This also includes evaluating new tools, new techniques, strategies; Automation of common tasks; build of common utilities to drive organizational efficiency with a passion around technology and solutions and influence of thought and leadership on future capabilities and opportunities to apply technology in new and innovative ways
* Generally work is self-directed and not prescribed
* Works with less structured, more complex issues
* Serves as a resource to others

Required Qualifications:

* Advanced degree (Masters or Doctorate) in Computational Linguistics, Computer Science, or other Computational discipline
* 2 years related professional work experience or significant academic NLP experience
* Strong background in Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence with an emphasis on text, Information Extraction/Retrieval, and/or associated principles of knowledge representation and ontological design.
* Strength and experience with at least 2 of the following: C , Java, C#, Python, SQL or Regular Expressions
* Knowledge of algorithms and techniques within a computational domain with emphasis on text processing
* Knowledge and experience with natural language processing or formal linguistics: morphology, syntax and semantics

Preferred Qualifications:

* Experience in the medical domain
* Experience with Lex/Yacc, ANTLR or other parser generator frameworks
* Experience with Drools
* Demonstrated ability to function within a team and to handle a variety of tasks, whether independent or working from specifications
* Logical thinker and quick learner with strong problem solving and analytical ability
* Customer service oriented with a strong commitment to produce high quality, workable solutions for both internal external customers
* Strong oral and written communication skills; capable of contributing at every level to effective project documentation

Careers with Optum. Here's the idea. We built an entire organization around one giant objective; make health care work better for everyone. So when it comes to how we use the world's large accumulation of health-related information, or guide health and lifestyle choices or manage pharmacy benefits for millions, our first goal is to leap beyond the status quo and uncover new ways to serve. Optum, part of the UnitedHealth Group family of businesses, brings together some of the greatest minds and most advanced ideas on where health care has to go in order to reach its fullest potential. For you, that means working on high performance teams against sophisticated challenges that matter. Optum, incredible ideas in one incredible company and a singular opportunity to do your life's best work.(sm)

Diversity creates a healthier atmosphere: UnitedHealth Group is an Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law.

UnitedHealth Group is a drug-free workplace. Candidates are required to pass a drug test before beginning employment.

Job Keywords: Optum360, NLP, Text Processing, Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, Information Extraction/Retrieval, Ontology, Computational Linguistics, San Diego, CA, California