Staff Embedded Software 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.

Essential Job Duties
• Gather high-level cross-functional requirements, ranging from customer-facing
requirements to clinical and safety requirements, and cybersecurity
requirements.
• Collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders on the definition of development
plans and timelines, that combine technical needs with schedule and resource
need.
• Identify interfaces and communication requirements between hardware and
software components, architect modular and testable software that supports the
system high-level behaviors.
• Support prototyping and development activities of novel surgical robotic
platforms, by leveraging and adapting the existing infrastructure that is shared
across all Intuitive robotic systems; learn from each iteration, refine and extend
code quickly and methodically.
• Lead formal risk analysis; identify additional hardware requirements and develop
software mitigations.
• Act as software lead in the high-level specification, bring-up and integration of
new custom PCAs and FPGA IP.
• Perform detailed design, development, documentation and support verification
activities of embedded software and supervisory state machines, in compliance
with regulatory requirements and Intuitive's internal guidelines.
• Contribute broadly to multiple areas of software development for our distributed
multi-processor systems, including but not limited to video and servo hardware
control and monitoring, inter-processor communication subsystem development, 

system diagnostic and service application development, user interface
development
• Apply high level and specialized industry expertise that results in new innovations
and problem-solving approaches that can be leveraged across multiple products.
• Represent your project ably in interactions externally with key customer
collaborators and internally within the company.

Required Education and Training
• Bachelor’s degree or above in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering or
Computer Engineering, or similar technical field.
• A minimum of 12 years of experience in developing and supporting embedded
systems (or 8 years with a Master’s degree, or 5 years with a PhD degree).
Required Skills and Experience
• Fluent in designing and developing mission-critical cross-platform code in C++ or
C, with focus on embedded and real time systems (e.g. QNX).
• Fluent with embedded compute architectures, and their development and testing
methodologies, including hardware debugging.
• Fluent with communication protocols such as TCP/IP, CAN,
serialization protocols.
• Fluent with memory management, concurrency, synchronous and asynchronous
event handling.

• Working knowledge of Python or other scripting languages for automation,
diagnostics and testing. Familiarity with Vivado and other FPGA
development tools.
Preferred Skills and Experience
• Familiarity with servo-controls and electro-mechanical systems.
• Experience designing software products in a regulated industry or for
mission critical applications; comfort with concepts of design input, design
output, traceability, risk analysis, and mitigations.
• Familiarity with medical technology projects from inception through
field validation to launch. Strong understanding of medical product ecosystem
services.
• Familiarity with CUDA programming and memory management concepts.
• Cyber-security concepts such as secure boot, authentication and encryption.
• Hands-on engineering experience with proven ability to work effectively in a team
environment.

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.