Optum is a global organization that delivers care, aided by technology to help millions of people live healthier lives. The work you do with our team will directly improve health outcomes by connecting people with the care, pharmacy benefits, data and resources they need to feel their best. Here, you will find a culture guided by inclusion, talented peers, comprehensive benefits and career development opportunities. Come make an impact on the communities we serve as you help us advance health optimization on a global scale. Join us to start **Caring. Connecting. Growing together.** **Job Description:** As a Senior Network Consultant within Optum's Technology organization, you will lead the design, governance, and transformation of enterprise LAN, routing, and switching solutions that form the backbone of Optum's global connectivity. This role blends deep technical expertise with solid leadership, executive communication, and financial stewardship. You will ensure Optum's enterprise network - spanning campus LANs, data center fabrics, WAN/SD-WAN, and firewalls - delivers high performance, resiliency, and security while directly enabling business outcomes. By defining robust architecture standards, optimizing routing protocols, advancing automation, and applying analytics-driven insights, you will ensure Optum achieves simplified, scalable, and reliable connectivity worldwide. **Primary Responsibilities:** + LAN, Routing and Switching Architecture - Design, standardize, and govern Optum's global LAN and routing architectures, including data center switching. Define resilient designs that leverage routing protocols such as OSPF, BGP and EIGRP to ensure deterministic, scalable, and secure traffic flows. Produce reference architectures, detailed design templates, and technology roadmaps to guide enterprise-wide implementations. Provide executive-level communication to ensure alignment of technical standards with Optum's strategic priorities + Routing Protocol Optimization and Standards - Lead the development, optimization, and governance of enterprise-wide routing protocols, ensuring stability, convergence, and scalability across Optum's global footprint. Drive adoption of best practices in route redistribution, summarization, path optimization, and high-availability design. Partner with operations teams to troubleshoot, tune, and optimize complex routing scenarios, ensuring predictable and resilient outcomes across LAN and WAN environments + Technology Innovation and Business Alignment - Evaluate and implement next-generation routing and switching technologies, working with key suppliers, including campus fabric designs, SD-Access, and advanced WAN/SD-WAN solutions. Conduct proof of concept and pilots that demonstrate improved performance, resiliency, and cost efficiency. Prepare business cases supported by ROI, TCO, and operational impact analyses, ensuring that network investments align directly with Optum's enterprise strategies + Solution Development, Testing and Certification - Develop and certify network designs through rigorous testing of LAN, routing, and security capabilities. Create high- and low-level design documentation, test cases, and validation plans to ensure enterprise readiness. Partner with vendors and project teams to align solutions with Optum's performance, resiliency, and compliance requirements. Provide clear, structured communications to executives and technical leaders on solution readiness and risk + Project Delivery and Execution Excellence - Serve as the technical lead on PMO-driven and enterprise projects, ensuring LAN and routing requirements are captured, designs are validated, and risks are mitigated throughout the lifecycle. Produce thorough design documentation, coordinate cross-functional reviews, and facilitate smooth transitions into production. Maintain solid executive communications regarding project scope, risks, and financials, ensuring transparency and confidence + Operational Expertise and Incident Leadership - Incident Leadership is a collaborative partnership between Network Engineering and Network Operations to ensure production networks remain stable, resilient, and continuously improving. Engineers act as trusted SMEs for high-priority incidents, working with Operations to restore services quickly and conduct thorough root cause analysis. Together, the teams focus on prevention by embedding lessons learned into future designs, tuning routing protocols, optimizing LAN reliability, and automating routine tasks. This combined approach ensures critical issues are solved quickly, risks are reduced, and the network continues to evolve toward greater resiliency and efficiency + Automation, Analytics and Continuous Improvement - Advance Optum's network maturity by introducing automation and analytics into LAN and routing environments. Implement configuration automation, monitoring dashboards, and data-driven analytics to ensure proactive detection of anomalies and optimization of routing behaviors. Champion continuous improvement, simplifying network operations and driving efficiency while mentoring peers and junior engineers + Comply with the terms and conditions of the employment contract, company policies and procedures, and any and all directives (such as, but not limited to, transfer and/or re-assignment to different work locations, change in teams and/or work shifts, policies in regards to flexibility of work benefits and/or work environment, alternative work arrangements, and other decisions that may arise due to the changing business environment). The Company may adopt, vary or rescind these policies and directives in its absolute discretion and without any limitation (implied or otherwise) on its ability to do so **Required Qualifications:** + CCNP Certified + 10+ years in network engineering and solution designing, with a focus on enterprise-level networking solutions + Experience with network segmentation, micro-segmentation, and policy-driven networks + Proven experience in contributing to and executing technology service development plans or roadmaps + Advanced understanding of telemetry protocols: syslog, SNMP, gRPC, Netflow, S-flow, SSH polling and templating and others + Familiarity with cloud-based networking (e.g., AWS, Azure) and hybrid networking solutions and automation tools like Ansible, Python, or SaltStack for network management and orchestration + Knowledge of cloud-native networking and integration with hybrid cloud environments + Good understanding of Cisco ACI Technology + Understand different Kinds for PRM automation + Proficient in network protocols, including BGP, OSPF, LISP, MPLS, VXLAN, and EVPN + Proficient in products from Cisco, Arista, Meraki, Nexus 5K, 7K and 9K and other vendors + Demonstrated ability to coordinate with PRM teams for new PRM automation requirements **Profile and skills:** + Your ability to lead discussions on relevant business topics in English language is the basis for efficient and eye-level communication with colleagues and partners worldwide + You have excellent problem-solving, troubleshooting, and analytical skills + You have solid communication and presentation skills, with the ability to convey technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders on management level + Ability to work collaboratively in cross-functional teams and manage multiple projects simultaneously + You can identify risks, document them and communicate along with developed mitigation measures + You have ability to drive process improvements and automation initiatives **Preferred Qualifications:** + CCIE + Datacenter infrastructure or Virtualization Knowledge _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._