Marine umbilical provides the remote control function for offshore oil and gas exploitation, which is usually integrated by different functional components that vary widely in their mechanical properties. Under the action of external load, unreasonable cross-sectional layouts may lead to large cross-sectional deformation and contact pressure between components thus affecting the service life of an umbilical. Therefore, how to design the cross-sectional layout is a very necessary research work in order to improve service life of the umbilical to withstand various loads during operation. At present, the research on the cross-sectional layout of an umbilical is not sufficient, and there is no standardized design method in the design specification. Considering the mechanical and geometrical properties as the quantitative design objectives, the mathematical optimization model of the cross-sectional layout of an umbilical is proposed. Meanwhile, the layering strategy is introduced because of the processing and manufacturing factors. Then, the genetic algorithm (GA) with good global search performance and the generalized Lagrange multiplier (GLM) with fast convergence speed are combined to solve the above model. Finally, taking an umbilical as an example, the optimal cross-sectional layout is obtained and the effectiveness of the algorithm is verified by the numerical simulation. The results show that the optimization method proposed in this paper can quickly obtain the optimal design cross-sectional layout, and supply a specific way for the fast design of an umbilical, which has the certain engineering application value.