Principal UX Architect

Role summary

Set design direction across multiple products or a portfolio within Optum Insight. You will decide what is worth designing, not just how it should look or behave. You will operate as a force multiplier: the frameworks, standards and strategic positions you create will be adopted by other designers and shape decisions beyond your direct work.

Primary responsibilities

• Set and own design strategy for a domain or portfolio, connecting design decisions to business outcomes such as adoption, retention, operational efficiency, quality, accuracy or revenue growth.
• Shape undefined, high-ambiguity problems by identifying what matters, sequencing the bets and aligning partners before a single screen exists.
• Create leverage that outlasts any one project, including principles with teeth, decision frameworks, cross-product patterns, standards and operating models that other teams adopt.
• Partner with senior leaders across Product, Engineering, Research, Data, Operations and the business to influence roadmap direction and investment choices.
• Resolve the hardest cross-team coherence problems where no single squad owns the full experience.
• Define and uphold the craft and strategic bar across designers; coach senior and lead designers on framing, influence, storytelling and execution quality.
• Connect user insight, product analytics, market context and business goals into clear experience strategies and decision narratives.
• Represent design in portfolio-level planning, governance and executive conversations with a clear point of view and practical trade-offs.

Required qualifications

• 13+ years of experience designing complex digital products, including a track record of setting direction across more than one product, team or platform.
• A portfolio that demonstrates strategic influence, systems thinking and force multiplication, not only individual product execution.
• Evidence that you created a framework, standard, operating model, product strategy or cross-product pattern that other teams adopted and that changed how an organization worked.
• Demonstrated ability to influence senior leaders without formal authority through clear reasoning, crisp narratives and credible trade-off framing.
• Strong business fluency, including the ability to frame design decisions in the language of outcomes, risk, sequencing and investment choices.
• High tolerance for undefined problems and the judgment to decide what the real question is.
• Depth in interaction design, information architecture, design systems, accessibility and enterprise product craft.
• Experience coaching senior designers and raising the quality of design work across teams through critique, standards and strategic guidance.

Tools and technical proficiency

• Expert-level Figma, including component libraries, variables, auto-layout, advanced prototyping and design-system tooling used to define and scale cross-product patterns.
• AI-assisted design and prototyping tools such as Figma Make, generative UI and LLM-based copilots to accelerate exploration, pattern generation and rapid concept validation.
• Fluency with AI/ML product patterns — prompt design, decision support, recommendations and human-in-the-loop review — and the tooling to test and refine AI-driven workflows.
• Collaboration, documentation and dev-handoff tooling (e.g., FigJam, design tokens, specs) and comfort partnering with engineering on feasibility and front-end implementation

Preferred qualifications

• Deep experience in health care, payer, provider, life sciences, analytics, reporting, revenue cycle, payment integrity, care management or value-based care products.
• Experience defining a design strategy that influenced a product, platform or portfolio roadmap.
• Experience designing AI-enabled or AI-assisted workflows, including decision support, recommendations, natural-language interfaces, automation or human-in-the-loop review patterns.
• Familiarity with commercial, regulatory, privacy, accessibility or operational dynamics in enterprise health care software.
• Experience leading cross-product coherence work across design systems, data experiences, workflows, navigation, configuration or reporting models.