Senior AI Data Science Engineer

It started with a simple idea: what if surgery could be less invasive and recovery less painful? Nearly 30 years later, that question still fuels everything we do at Intuitive. As a global leader in robotic-assisted surgery and minimally invasive care, our technologies—like the da Vinci surgical system and Ion—have transformed how care is delivered for millions of patients worldwide.

We’re a team of engineers, clinicians, and innovators united by one purpose: to make surgery smarter, safer, and more human. Every day, our work helps care teams perform with greater precision and patients recover faster, improving outcomes around the world.

The problems we solve demand creativity, rigor, and collaboration. The work is challenging, but deeply meaningful—because every improvement we make has the potential to change a life.

If you’re ready to contribute to something bigger than yourself and help transform the future of healthcare, you’ll find your purpose here.

Primary Function of Position

Advancing embodied AI in robotic surgery requires high-quality data across the robotic platform, the surgical field, and the operating room environment. The Senior AI/Data Science Engineer will advance the data strategy and engineering that turns surgical data into curated, research-ready datasets for AI/ML teams building intelligent surgical systems.

Working within Intuitive's Future Forward research organization, you will make judgment calls about what data matters, drive the quality bar, and build the infrastructure that delivers research-ready datasets. This role calls for someone who is equally comfortable getting hands-on with data and designing systems that scale.

Roles and Responsibilities

• Architect data models and build pipelines that process and integrate surgical data into well-structured datasets across the robotic platform, surgical field, and operating room environment.
• Drive the data collection strategy: assess data coverage and plan collection approaches to address evolving research needs.
• Own data quality frameworks including validation, anomaly detection, completeness metrics, and lineage tracking so datasets are reliable enough to support training of intelligent surgical systems.
• Drive annotation workflows, including label taxonomy, tooling selection, and quality control, in collaboration with surgeons, clinical researchers, and domain experts.
• Partner with AI/ML researchers to understand downstream requirements and deliver well-documented datasets ready for model development.
• Build tooling that makes it easy for researchers to find, access, and work with surgical datasets.
• Collaborate with surgeons, clinical research teams, robotics engineers, and systems engineers to understand how physical actions and perception translate into data, and ensure relevant signals are captured.
• Contribute to the broader data strategy for embodied AI, including infrastructure and tooling recommendations aligned with research needs.

Qualifications

• Master's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, or a related technical field with 6+ years of relevant experience, or PhD with 3+ years of relevant experience.
• Strong proficiency in Python and SQL for data processing, transformation, and analysis, with familiarity across both relational and non-relational data stores.
• Experience with distributed data processing or workflow orchestration frameworks (e.g., Spark, Airflow, or similar).
• Track record of designing and building data pipelines for multi-modal datasets (video, time-series, sensor data, structured and unstructured data).
• Demonstrated ability to set data quality standards and implement validation frameworks.
• Experience working with multiple concurrent data streams from different sources and modalities.
• Comfortable working with data that ranges from raw and unstructured to clean and production-grade.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills in ambiguous, research-oriented environments where you shape the approach, not just execute it.
• Clear communicator who can work across engineering, research, and clinical teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Background in healthcare, medical devices, surgical robotics, or other regulated technical domains.
• Hands-on experience with computer vision data workflows.
• Understanding of machine learning frameworks and how data quality and structure impact model performance.
• Prior work interfacing with embedded systems teams to ingest on-device data streams into broader data infrastructure.
• Practical experience with data annotation tools, workflows, and quality control at scale.
• Familiarity with ML experiment tracking or data versioning tools (e.g., MLFlow, DVC, Weights & Biases).
• Working knowledge of cloud data platforms, containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), and storage solutions.
• Experience with robotics middleware, simulation environments, synthetic data generation, or 3D spatial data tooling.
• Awareness of data governance in regulated environments (HIPAA, FDA).

Due to the nature of our business and the role, please note that Intuitive and/or your customer(s) may require that you show current proof of vaccination against certain diseases including COVID-19.  Details can vary by role.

Intuitive is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We provide equal employment opportunities to all qualified applicants and employees, and prohibit discrimination and harassment of any type, without regard to race, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, color, age, religion, protected veteran or disability status, genetic information or any other status protected under federal, state, or local applicable laws.

Mandatory Notices

U.S. Export Controls Disclaimer:  In accordance with the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (15 CFR §743.13(b)), some roles at Intuitive Surgical may be subject to U.S. export controls for prospective employees
who are nationals from countries currently on embargo or sanctions status.

Certain information you provide as part of the application will be used for purposes of determining whether Intuitive Surgical will need to (i) obtain an export license from the U.S. Government on your behalf (note: the government’s licensing process can take 3 to 6+ months) or (ii) implement a Technology Control Plan (“TCP”) (note: typically adds 2 weeks to the hiring process).  

For any Intuitive role subject to export controls, final offers are contingent upon obtaining an approved export license and/or an executed TCP prior to the prospective employee’s
start date, which may or may not be flexible, and within a timeframe that does not unreasonably impede the hiring need. If applicable, candidates will be notified and instructed on any requirements for these purposes. 

We will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records in accordance with fair chance laws.

Preference will be given to qualified candidates who do not reside, or plan to reside, in Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, or Tennessee.

This position may be filled at a different job level than listed here depending on
business need and/or on the selected candidate’s experience, knowledge and skills.
Compensation will be based primarily on the job level at which the role is filled and the
candidate’s qualifications, consistent with applicable law.

We provide market-competitive compensation packages, inclusive of base pay, incentives, benefits, and equity. It would not be typical for someone to be hired at the top end of range for the role, as actual pay will be determined based on several factors, including experience, skills, and qualifications. The target compensation ranges are listed.